Anonymous wrote:OP, the previous owners of our house finished the basement, and there are some sections where the ceiling is lower than others, I'm assuming due to pipes and stuff. It doesn't look odd at all (at least, I don't think so--we bought the house!).

We bought a house with a similar basement - it's mostly 7'1" high, with a few sections that are only 6'3". Those areas feel really low, but are only in a couple places and it's not very noticeable. Many of the neighbors have commented how nice and high our ceiling seems compared to other finished basements. Might be worth exploring with your contractor?

OP, sounds fine to me. The basement of our 1930s house was semi-finished by previous owners. Height is probably less than 7 feet (I haven't measured). It's not awesome, but it's way better than if it were totally unfinished, and we use the space quite a bit.

OP, the previous owners of our house finished the basement, and there are some sections where the ceiling is lower than others, I'm assuming due to pipes and stuff. It doesn't look odd at all (at least, I don't think so--we bought the house!).

OP here. As for the code thing, this would not be an official living space so my understanding is that it's fine from that perspective. This is a pretty old (1940), very small (1000 sq ft not including basement) rowhouse. The contractors I've talked to say that the basement is the same height as most others in the area, but I did have one (tall) contractor express concern about putting in recessed lights with such a low ceiling.

There's absolutely no way I'm paying to dig lower. It is not at all in our budget and for us, there's no way we'd recoup the money.

Thanks for the honest opinions and keep them coming.