Home Series | Basement Renovation

At Home

Feb 24

Our basement renovation is by far our most dramatic before and after in the house, yet I feel like I say that each time we wrap a project. This one definitely takes the cake!

While we’ve talked about the possibility of finishing our basement for the past several years, I think we can blame the motivation to do it on post-lockdown restlessness. It was a big job with several required steps to get us here – from waterproofing, new plumbing, and re-routing of air ducts to leveling the existing floor, framing out new rooms, and finishing it out with functional (yet stylish) details.

Adding a second full bathroom to our house has been a huge value-add for our property and for liveability. We previously had a classic Lakewood “toilet in the basement” which fortunately had makeshift walls around it – but adding a sink, shower, and actual walls? Major upgrade.

Since so much of our budget went into getting the space to a solid baseline, we chose more budget-friendly options where it made sense for a basement (for example, a bathroom vanity/sink combo, laminate countertops, installing flooring only where needed).

Our basement was never particularly creepy (as far as old basements go), but it was full of potential to make it not only more welcoming, but more functional from a space usage standpoint. Instead of keeping the floorplan as one large, continuous room, we thoughtfully broke up the space into a few functional areas:

Main room for laundry, and rec area/dry bar with cabinet storage
Exercise nook using the unused wall space behind the shower on opposite wall
Utility room with work bench, storage, housing the furnace and water heater
Full bathroom with thoughtful inset shelves and laundry chute

The new layout is so much more efficient, provides more storage, and surprisingly makes the entire basement look bigger, even with the walls added. Scroll on through to see how each room came to life, along with a peek at our surprising “before”!