Which project will improve quality of life more for young family, backyard or finished basement?

[Anonymous]

We gutted a fixer upper and are really over budget.. I think we are going to have to pick between one of the following two projects for this year and wait a year or two for the other one.

For background, we are a young family with a preschool aged (only) child. We will not be having any more children. Our house is 2800 sf above ground, but we do not really have a defined rec room on the main level which bothers me a lot for several different reasons. We have plenty of bedrooms and space otherwise. We have a .5 acre lot with an enormous backyard, but the side of the backyard borders a relatively busy road. I feel that the backyard is unusable for a young child until we put in a fence. However, we live directly across the street from a small park with a play area.

We can:

Pull out a bunch of trees in the backyard that sort of break up the lot, put in a fence so there is no safety issue with the busy street, and buy an awesome swingset. This would make the backyard fantastic. We love to grill in the summer and would probably be outside almost every day with grilling and play time.. I have no doubt that we would get a ton of use out of this between May - September.

OR

Finish the basement - put in a full bath, bedroom and rec room. This would give us a great play space that would probably be used a good amount on weekends throughout the year, but hardly ever during the week. We do not have many overnight guests, but when we do, this would make it so much easier with them (and us) having some privacy, and they would not need to share the hall bath upstairs. On a very secondary note, this would also let us remove the toys from the makeshift upstairs playroom so we would each have our own home office again. Not a huge deal, as we are doing just fine sharing a home office, but I suppose it is worth some consideration. The big draw for me is that this would let us host a lot of play dates which we love doing, since we would have so much space for the kids. We have a trusted contractor who can do this at a low enough cost that we would probably be getting a dollar for dollar return on our money if we had to sell immediately, which we do not intend to do - but you never know, crazier things have happened with unexpected layoffs, etc. Backyard would have a substantially lower return on investment.

I am really torn. I think deep down I would rather do the basement and my husband would rather do the backyard. What would you do?

[Anonymous]

basement

[Anonymous]

backyard - kids need outdoor space.

[Anonymous]

backyard. It is so nice when they can go outside without having to stand right there.

You have 2800 sf above ground I can't imagine how you don't have a playroom in that space?? FWIW we have 1600 sf above ground, have a designated playroom and chose to put money into our yard before our basement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:backyard. It is so nice when they can go outside without having to stand right there.

You have 2800 sf above ground I can't imagine how you don't have a playroom in that space?? FWIW we have 1600 sf above ground, have a designated playroom and chose to put money into our yard before our basement.

+1
If you have plenty of bedrooms upstairs, it seems silly to put money into creating another one. Make a bedroom a playroom and make a portion of the unfinished basement usable but not finished. When I was a kid, I used to rollerskate in our empty half of the unfinished basement. Add a cheap table for messy art projects. Perfect space and good indoor complement to backyard for bigger toys and messier, more active play.

[Anonymous]

Basement. We just got our basement redone and now use it as a family/playroom and are down there all the time. While having a great backyard is nice, because your kid is still little, they can't play outside unsupervised so waiting a year or two would be better. The basement wil be used year round, and you would probably be ok with DC playing down there alone for short amounts of time. I love our refinished basement!

Our backyard is fenced (no swing set) and our kids play in it, but the mosquitoes make it unpleasant to spend lots of time
Out there.

[Anonymous]

Both sound like great improvements to your home, but if I was selecting the order in which I would do them, I would do the backyard first. Preschool and early elementary are great ages for swingsets. And kids that age really benefit from lots of time outside (in my own experience, anyway). So, encourage it now. You will get more use from the basement as your child gets older and can play down there alone or with his or her friends. You'll definitely want it by the time your child is a teenager!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both sound like great improvements to your home, but if I was selecting the order in which I would do them, I would do the backyard first. Preschool and early elementary are great ages for swingsets. And kids that age really benefit from lots of time outside (in my own experience, anyway). So, encourage it now. You will get more use from the basement as your child gets older and can play down there alone or with his or her friends. You'll definitely want it by the time your child is a teenager!

Not really, kids aren't home most of the day and a basement will actually increase your apparaisal

[Anonymous]

OP here- there really are a lot of pros and cons to both. Thanks so much for the answers - it is really helpful to hear other thoughts.

As for why we don't have a playroom, we do have a bedroom-turned-playroom on the upstairs level right next to my daughter's bedroom. That's the room that would become a second home office if we finished the basement. It is fine for her purposes but not big enough to have a crowd in there if we have friends over. So we have been using the family room as a playroom, which is fine for now, but not ideal. Don't have enough room there for most of her toys, etc.

The mosquitos are a VERY good point and I really appreciate that from whoever made it. I totally forgot about mosquitos. Even the seller's agent who sold us our home acknowledged that mosquitos were an issue in our area and that spraying was ineffective because the rain would basically wash it all off. That's a really really good point that I had totally forgotten about.

[Anonymous]

Directly across the street from a little play area? I would definitely do the basement, in that case. Our basement is our TV room/playroom, and we love it. Our toddler's bedroom obviously has some toys in it, but like you we have no play space on the main level. Having a specific playroom is priceless, if you have the room for it.

[Anonymous]

Backyard for sure.

[Anonymous]

Backyard. We have a full basement - put the majority of the toys down there, guest bedroom and bathroom. The kids prefer to be on the same level as me and I'm not down there that much. I think that will change as they get older.

Do the backyard now. Kids that age love the outdoors. They would appreciate the basement when they get older. Plus, if you wait to do the basement when they are a little bit older, you can design it with more a tween/teen vantage point.

[Anonymous]

Basement. We have a very basic finished basement and it's a great place to send the kids (ages 3 and 5) with their friends when they feel like getting rowdy. We also live next to a park and use that far more than our backyard.

[Anonymous]

Backyard but I wouldn't pull out any trees and I'd buy a swingset off of Craigslist or the like so it's way cheaper. Put in the fence so you feel safe.

We like our trees because:
-we will likely want a tree house as the boys get older
-shade in the summer is awesome
-they're used frequently as part of their games, running around, building off of them (well, leaning stuff against them) and for hanging their hammock and eventually their slack line.

[Anonymous]

Basement and then do the backyard later