Anonymous wrote:If you have walkout and/or center stairs, think hard about traffic flow and where you place laundry room, bathrooms and walls. We did what seemed right, but after seeing how a neighbor with the same house and same finished elements arranged their rooms, we realized we had the spaces/traffic flow entirely wrong! I mean it’s not horrible, but it could be so much better.

How did they arrange it that was better?

Anonymous wrote:1) Installed basement egress windows with waterproofing in our spare room. We could have then be able to sell the house with an extra bedroom, plus got more light and openness.




2) Added sink, counter spaceb, fridge to a small nook to make it into a small kitchenette/bar. That way we could rent it out if we wanted to.



3) Made a grill cover for our sump pump drain to keep leaves and debris away. We could have prevented our basement flooding.

PP with the egress window - is this a picture of the actual work you had done? Would love to know who did it - looking for something exactly like this for our basement but having a hard time finding a contractor. TIA

Put in a bathroom and plus 1 on no wall to wall carpet.

Anonymous wrote:Dig up the outside foundation walls, use dimple membrane, install french drain and sump. Drylock is bs used to sell homes and hide problems. 9 foot ceilings.

It worked for us.

Dig up the outside foundation walls, use dimple membrane, install french drain and sump. Drylock is bs used to sell homes and hide problems. 9 foot ceilings.

If you live in a neighborhood with the same model home as you, see what they did in their basement to give you ideas. We were in townhouses and we went to any open house that was our same model to get both kitchen ideas and basement refinishing ideas. You can also just go through the "sold" listings on redfin to find same model homes that have sold over the years and peek at all their basement pics.

We moved into a SFH that has the hvac and water heat smack dab in the middle of the basemnt. Previous owner just walled around it giving us an "U" shaped basement. It sucks. If we refinish it, I'm going to see what we can do about moving that to give us more space. If yours is in a similar location, move it now if you can.

If you have an exterior stairwell with a drain, make sure the drain is functional and has a drain thatcdetrrs the inevitable leaf and debris collection.

1/ Moving mechanical out of the basment frees up a lot of space.

2/ moist exterior walls behind drywall are mound traps

3/ should have paid more attention to soundproofing the ceiling.

1) Installed basement egress windows with waterproofing in our spare room. We could have then be able to sell the house with an extra bedroom, plus got more light and openness.




2) Added sink, counter spaceb, fridge to a small nook to make it into a small kitchenette/bar. That way we could rent it out if we wanted to.



3) Made a grill cover for our sump pump drain to keep leaves and debris away. We could have prevented our basement flooding.