Basement Floorplan x 14

So, I found a bunch of contractors in my area through some website called Service Magic about a month ago and scheduled four different appointments to try to get some estimates of how much it would cost to finish our basement.  Our estimates ranged from $13,000 to $25,000.  Luckily the contractor with the lowest bid proposal was the one that we liked the most BEFORE we knew what the bids were and that we were going to pick him.

Yep, that's right.  I think we're ACTUALLY going to finish our basement.  This is, if the contractor doesn't give up on me and decide that I'll be too much of a pain in the butt to work with.

At this point, I've come up with 14 different floor plans for the basement.  Luckily for him, I've only emailed him four of them.  So here are SOME of the different floor plans I've come up with.

 Plan 1: This was the ORIGINAL plan that we sent to the contractor.  Simple, but the office isn't separated by a wall and I thought it might be nice for Doug to have his own computing space that I DIDN'T see. :)

Plan 2: I decided that this plan didn't use the space well AND I didn't like the random pole in the middle.

Plan 3: I sent this plan to the contractor and I really liked it because we had added a whole room and changed the old office in the upper right-hand corner to a library with built in shelving. But then I taped it out for Doug to see on the basement floor and he thought the section of the office closest to the bathroom was too small to make it into a room... and I kind of agreed with him begrudgingly.  Sooo, back to the drawing board.  I was worried that I was trying to do too much with the space we had, but the levels above the basement do more with the same amount of space, so I was determined to keep trying.

Plan 4: I really was liking this plan because it increased the size on the office and changed the entry of the food storage room so I wouldn't have to go into "Doug Territory" each time I needed an extra can of tomato sauce and such.  It also had the added advantage of a big linen closet in between the storage and workroom. I didn't like the small entry way into the office, but it was doable.  THEN we ended up going to Washington DC with my cousin and saw this amazing salt water aquarium display at the Museum of Natural History, so we needed an unfinished place for a tank.  If Doug decides that he's not going to do a tank after all, I guess this plan could still be in the running.

Plan 5:  I still like this plan, but I'm not sure what I would do with the 7x5 space in the middle of the basement, so I added it to the storage space in one of the final versions of the plan.

 Plan 6 (above) and Plan 7 (below): I sent these last two plans to the contractor yesterday.  I know that the ceiling is going to need to be lower in some places because of the central air ducts in the basement, so I'm not sure if I can place the bathroom where I did in plans 4, 5, and 6. I'm not sure if I like the little hallway in plan 7, but I do like the little linen closet off of the bathroom.  Also, it won't be a problem having Doug's workroom right off of his office because he's the only one that will really use it.  The one thing that I kind of don't like about either of these plans is that the door to our unfinished space is right in the middle of the basement.  There's a part of me that thinks that the entrance to storage should be tucked away in a corner like in Plan 4.

Yep, so now I'm waiting for him to respond back to my email from yesterday.  Usually he responds within a day, but he could be on vacation or something or just really busy on a job.  One of the reasons we really like him was that he was easygoing, but very business-like.

Basement Plans

So, I've been bothering my husband non-stop about finishing the basement of our house for about two years now.  I've toyed with different ideas and done some drawings.  Yesterday, I sat down on my computer and drew this up in Paint. (I don't have any other software on my computer that I thought could do the job.)



First in the upper left-hand corner is the storage room/tank maintenance room.  I want to put in some big metal shelving units to organize food storage on the left side of the room.  Also, Doug and I used to have a salt water aquarium upstairs that we absolutely loved, but maintenance on it was overwhelming with Doug's long work hours from his last job, so we had to get rid of it.  He now has a job that has more reasonable hours (for the most part) and the location of the tank near the bathroom would make it easy to design some automated systems that would make the management of the tank a lot easier.

I call the place in front of where the tank is the "Tank Room" where the front of the salt water tank could be seen.  I'm thinking that there could be a couch or a built-in bench with storage underneath up against the bathroom wall.  I figure that area could also double as a play area if/when we get to have kids.

Doug has ideas for the TV room that involve surround sound and other such man toys.  The office is below the laundry room upstairs and it's kind of this random area that juts out of the house.  I figured we could put a desk and some shelves in there and call it an "Office" even though is really just an awkward 8x8 space.  The bedroom has a egress window so it technically can be called one.  The gray area next to the bedroom is a storage place under the stairs.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about construction or building anything.  I simply took measurements of where everything was in the basement.  There were a few things that I had no choice over like the two support beams in the middle of the room seen on either side of the blue tank.  The area where I have placed the bathroom is where the rough in's are located.  The workroom contains the water heater and HVAC system for the house, so that is dead space as well.  And of course the location of the stairs can't be changed. 

This would move our house into another buying category, a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath house which would be good if we ever need to sell.  Also, it would just be nice to not have it unfinished.  I lived my whole life in a house that was in various stages of unfinishedness so the current state of our basement basically drives me insane.

I tried to look up some basic guidelines for quotes on finishing the basement and I got a range from $4,000 to $24,000.  So right now we're looking for an actual quote that can narrow down that range a little further.  If it is in the upper end, I will just have to deal with the current state of my basement basically forever.  I don't think Doug would ever go for a price tag like that.  I'm hoping that we could get it ALL done for somewhere between 10-12,000, but that may just be hopeful thinking.

Any know someone handy in the Northern Virginia area that can do a job like this?