I just spoke with Jose Lopez. Very nice guy. He gave me some helpful advice even though I wasn't hiring him for work.

We're looking into this too. Would be curious to know how much folks have paid for this kind of work? Like the OP, we're hoping to keep costs under $20-25K but I'm not sure if this is realistic or not. We have a 50's era 3 BR cape cod, so the basement is modest in size.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Big thanks for the recommendation! I'll give them a call.

PP here - one thing we did to keep our costs down was to have him give us line-item costs for the various components. By doing it that way, we picked and chose what our highest priorities were, and nixed the items that were nice-to-haves but which we couldn't afford. He crossed them off the list and re-did the estimate.

He is very flexible and creative - if while doing the work he sees that something isn't doable or won't come out well, he will give you alternative ideas.

OP here. Big thanks for the recommendation! I'll give them a call.

PP here - I referred a few friends to him, and they were equally happy with his work.

Jose Lopez did our kitchen and basement family room - he was terrific and is discussed here:

http://batesareacivicassociation.org/home-services/general-contractors/

Jose Lopez Enterprises
240- 832- 3621
jandlcompany@aol.com

We recently bought a rowhouse in DC with a 1-bedroom basement apartment. The problem is that the basement is sadly outdated and slightly run down (unlike the rest of the house, which the owners had carefully renovated). We're discovering that a lot of reputable contractors have no interest in taking on a project that won't come to more than $50k, which is the absolute max we would want to spend to make this unit a decent rental option (we'd really prefer to keep the tab to under $25k). Has anyone worked with a good contractor on a modest project? Many thanks in advance.