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Basement Planning: THE Plan

We've been dreaming up, obsessing over, planning the basement remodel for quite a while now.  We keep honing in on the specifics and after meeting with our contractor for some consultation, we think we have a pretty clear idea!  We're going to take our current floor plan:

And turn it into this:

Here's the room by room.

Laundry Room

We were originally planning on saving this room for a future renovation but we realized it makes so much sense to do the insulation, framing, drywall, flooring, and electrical at the same time we do the rest of the basement.  We plan to:

• Take down the wood paneling which is attached to the exterior wall and replace it with an insulated wall and drywall.
• Move the washer and dryer to the wall on the right so we can move clothes from the washer and dryer without walking and inevitably dropping something on the icky floor.  Also, when we eventually replace these with a matching W& D it gives us better options for building a table and shelves over them.
• Build a clothes-folding surface along the left wall with shelves or cupboards above the work space.
• Add extra kitchen storage since our kitchen is pretty small.  We'll store kitchen items we don't use often (like roasting pans and fondue sets) along with bulk food on these shelves and in our stand alone freezer (gotta love Costco!)
• Add new flooring, electrical that's up to code, plumbing to the W & D, and heating.

Work Room

We won't do much here.  It's ugly but it's a utility/work room.  We'll add better lighting and beefier electrical outlets for power tools.

Bathroom

Well... that's where it will go!

It's not in our budget to finish this bathroom right away, but this is the time to rough in plumbing and walls.  We'll have to tear up some of the foundation to add drains from the toilet and possible shower (if there's room for a shower).  Tearing up the foundation is a dusty, messy, job so we want to do that while the basement is gutted and in chaos already.  We'll build walls and add plumbing but we we'll save flooring, tiles, and fixtures for another day year.

Family Room

This 12'x25' room will be the main living area in the basement.  We see it being used as our theater where we'll watch movies, a play area for kids (ya know, when we have them), a game room, and a mini library.  We want it to be modular so if we want to we can move the couches against the wall and have a long open area or arrange things for more movie seating.  Things we'll do to the family room:

• Rebuild the walls with proper insulation
• Move the obnoxious radiator piles to run along the support beam at the edge of the room instead of in the middle of the room.  We actually didn't realize we could do this until our contractor brought it up.  That made my day month since I hate that pipe so much!

• Add white board and batten to the walls like we talked about in our modern arts & crafts post.
• Mount the TV and turn that wall into a full white architecture wall like Rambling Renovators did to their bedroom.
• Build a wall-to-wall built in book case in a "C" shape kind of like a bay window.  We want the style to be similar to the Pottery Barn Kids Cameron media center but melded with our arts & crafts style home.  We'll also put a kids-sized bench for reading in the middle.  This is one of the last things we'll build so it's not all fleshed out yet but here's a concept drawing of the middle section.  Imagine more shelves coming off the sides at 45 degree angles.

• Add lots of lighting and controls to go from bright light to dim movie light.
• Add new floors, heat, and electricity.

Bedroom

This room is kind of an extra room right now.  This would be our fourth bedroom which is a lot of bedrooms for two people!  Right now our 3rd bedroom is an office/hobby room and this would be a second guest room.  Down the road we'll turn the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms into kids room and this will become the office/hobby room/guest bedroom.  Ok, does it sound like we have babies on our brains?  Well, we kind of need to since we're planning the basement for how we'll use it for many years down the road and there's a good chance we'll have kids in the picture for the majority of our basement usage!  Defensive stance over: for the bedroom we plan to:

• Properly insulate the exterior walls
• Move the door from the wall facing the stairs to the wall facing the game area (because we want a storage room where the door is currently).  We want to make the doorway large because the egress window in the bedroom is a great source of natural light in the basement but we want it to be private for people using the guest bedroom.  Our solution - double pocket doors!  That way we can have a 6 foot opening when the doors are open but close it all the way if needed and we'll end up with more wall space than french doors would allow, which is a huge necessity if we plan on actually utilizing this room as a hobby room, office AND guest room down the line.
• Architectural ceiling like we talked about in our modern arts & crafts post.
• Add better lighting, flooring, and heat.
• Finish the closet to have concealed but accessible utilities, a closet rod, and shelves.

Storage

Pretty much like that but with walls so you don't see it and a pocket door to maximize wall space inside (no door swinging door radius to worry about.)

So that's our "tour of ideas", we hope you enjoyed the ride!  Don't feel bad if you think our basement is nasty, we totally agree.  That's why we're changing it!

Check out the rest of our basement posts!