Sounds like a good place to start. A few dollars paid out today gets you answers that will let you move forward for the next 10 years of renovations. Once the structural engineer answers your questions, you will want to look at design/build firms (assuming you do not need/want and architect).

In addition to an engineer, you need either a copy of the building code (new every 3 years) that governs your locality, or you need a contractor partner who owns one. Basement bedrooms need egress windows and changes to the electrical to meet current codes. (They also rarely add back the value of the expense of doing them as they are below grade and do not appraise he same as above grade space.) Any of your projects will need to be permitted and inspected.

As far as costs, paying for labor, plan to spend at least what you spent on the house making it over with such ambitious changes planned. Breaking it up into smaller projects only works if you plan the work in the correct order, and do the needed infrastructure upgrades first. Study the Cost vs Value Report bath for costs and for which projects offer the most return.

I thought I'd add a before and after picture of our vision for the basement. The basement is already finished. But right now it's just three huge rooms that don't really have a function. By rearranging the layout we hope to make this space more utilized and homey. Our first project will be removing that middle wall to open up the space, and allow easier access to the laundry room. After that, we'll add the two interior walls to make a bedroom. As you can see it has its own window. We will have to bring in an electrician to change some of the light switches and to help with adding electric outlets on the new walls. We'll also need a hvac person to add a vent in the existing duct that goes longways through the ceiling of the entire span of the basement. The master suite to the left is a project that's later down the road. Besides the electrical and hvac stuff, we hope to do most of the renovation ourselves. We've dabbed in some diy projects and both grew up in families that often did extensive diy renovations. But even so, we both still have a lot to learn. Thanks for the input so far!

You may as well post the upstairs plans too, for those of us that are curious.

When was the house built? By duct through the ceiling, do you mean that it is up inside the floor trusses, or just sheetrocked around and underneath floor joists? How tall is the ceiling? Is there really 15 stair treads in a 10' run?

Here's the upstairs before and after. The stairs are 11', but it does have 15 steps. Ridiculously small, I know. We've considered taking the stairs all the way to the bottom and having two or three steps turn to the left at the bottom. If that makes sense? The ductwork is plastered on under the joists. The ceiling is 8ft, aside from the drop down ductwork. And the house was built in 1967. I'll post some pictures from when it was listed as well. It's a very nice house, we'd like to make the layout a little more efficient.

Here's more photos :) the basement is just about completely empty right now.

More photos

It would certainly be disappointing if you did all that work without fixing the stairs. Especially, since you plan on having a master bedroom down there.

http://publicecodes.cyberregs.com/icod/irc/2012/icod_irc_2012_3_sec011.htm

I'll be sure to add it to our list of questions about everything being up to code with our project plans. Thanks for pointing that out!