Our goal is to have our basement completely renovated in a year. We have to be realistic about how much time we can actually commit to projects and this is a big one. Since we are trying to use it as an investment and potentially we’ll have guests staying there, we want to make sure we do everything the way we want the first time around in the most affordable way possible.
The basement is huge, and the work that had been done by the previous owners gives us a good head start. The first thing we need to determine is where we’ll put an external entrance. This is easily the most expensive part of the project and maybe the last task we’ll complete before finishing up painting. It’s turning out to be more difficult to find a place to put the egress than we thought. In the 80’s the previous owners did a huge renovation, extending the back of the house out by 6 feet and building a deck. In the front there was a small covered porch that extended the length of the house, and they covered that as well and bumped the house out. I’m grateful for the extra square footage, but the additions extended the size of the footprint for just the main floor, so access to the basement from the outside would be difficult to create and probably not worth it. The north side of the house is already built to the easement line, so we’d have to put the entrance on the south side of the house. The two rooms on the south side are the bedroom and the laundry room (the bathroom is in the northwest corner of the basement, for some perspective). The laundry room would not be part of the ADU, so we’d have to build the entrance into the bedroom. It is a little awkward to enter an apartment into a bedroom, but it would save us some money (because then we wouldn’t have to build another egress from the bedroom). The other challenge is that the entrance would have to be built into our driveway, without preventing us from using our driveway.
We have some time to work that out though. Our first big project is demoing all the stuff we don’t want to keep: wood paneling, drop ceiling, bar/counter, cabinets and bedroom and assessing if we need to move any of the framed walls to adjust the room sizes. You can also check out my Pinterest board for the basement in case you don’t want to keep scrolling.
Living Area
The living room/area of the basement has so much going on. The brick is gorgeous and the benches are going to be so cozy.
We’ll remove the wood paneling, carpet and drop ceiling. Depending on what’s behind the wood paneling (I’m hoping just framing), we’ll put in new drywall and paint the ceiling and brick white to make the room feel bigger and not like a basement. I’m still undecided on whether or not we’ll add back in wall to wall carpeting. It’s so nice and cozy, but also more expensive than area rugs to maintain and keep clean. I’d love to put in a wood mantel, and try something like this black brick, but because it’s a basement, might have to stick to super light tones.
The Bedroom
This is the room that will likely end up with the exterior entrance. We’ll remove the wood paneling, drop ceiling, those old cabinets, carpet and may end up pushing the wall into the living room a bit to add more space and allow room for an entry that feels more natural than walking right into a bedroom. There’s actually great light in the room as it is, so, opening it up, raising the ceilings, and painting will make it even brighter.
I actually haven’t thought much about the style of this room, but I’m thinking something like the room below in this fabulous house.
The Kitchen
I really want to take this wall out and open up the space and build a kitchen off the living room. The ceiling the hallway between the bathroom and living room is lower because all the ductwork runs through that space, so it might be tricky. I’m not sure how we’ll add plumbing for a sink there either. So the alternative would be to put the kitchen along the stair wall. We’ll close the stairs up and put in a door that locks from inside.
The Bathroom
Everything in this bathroom needs to be replaced, down to that beautiful linoleum. We might keep the wood paneling (!) and paint it white to avoid having to redo all the drywall, replace the sink and toilet and power wash the shower. The doors need to be replaced with a single door that locks. And all the hardware and fixtures need to be replaced and the fan needs replacing. The glass on the window is cracked, so we’ll have to find out if that requires fixing immediately or if we can wait until we have the money to replace all the windows in the house at once.
The Laundry Room
Since this space may or may not be accessible to the basement unit, I’m not going to try to fix it up too much. There is only paneling on the one wall, so we’d remove that when we remove everything else and take out the cabinet about the washer and dryer. We’d have to add in some extra shelving in this room, since we’ll need the storage space we’ve taken away by freeing up the basement. The rug piece on the floor is the excess from our stair runner, which is installed, but I haven’t documented yet because I haven’t finished painting. Might be another month before I finish that project.
These are examples of my dream laundry room. I don’t hate doing laundry right now, but I will LOVE LOVE LOVE it when it looks like one of those some day.