beautiful flowing design

I live in Cardiff, UK. Most of the Victorian houses around here have a basement - you can easily tell by looking for the coal chute at the front of the house - although these days most people replaced them with windows or sun tunnels (see last photo).

We actually increased the size of our town house basement (dug out an extra room) when renovating the place last year. We use one room as a media room, the other for storage and have a laundry room in a narrow end. The storage room was a necessity, as we decided to get rid of the (hard to access) attic in favour of a high ceiling loft and vaulted ceilings.

You don't want to see my basement. It's old and creepy. However, we are going to fix that over the next couple years. We'll be finishing it and putting in an extra bedroom.

We have a 60 year old house with a stone basement, so we're limited with what we can do. But we cleaned up the walls with masonry paint, cemented the gravel gap against the wall and the floor and sealed and painted the floor. Everything else is just cosmetic and we use it as an extra playroom/rec room.

Here's a better image . . .

Good morning and thank you for your thread. I think you personify a very common problem with many home owners across America.

Our basement rec room is approx 33' long by 13' wide. At one end is a brick fireplace on an angle that is a challenge for us. We are in the planning stage for how to do this room and any suggestions are welcome. We will have a pool table at the end opposite the fireplace, a TV over the fireplace. The wall facing the fireplace has a large window and we plan to place our 7' oak bar (that hubby is currently finishing) along that window. We have a spa room out that window. We are thinking about using bamboo or laminate flooring. Still deciding on paint color for the walls (they are paneled and currently white). Would like to use recessed lighting.

We turned our " Down under" Themed basement into a home theater.

I would be interested to see those with really low basement ceilings. kjohnso we need to do something similar to our walls. How was that experience for you? Did cementing the gravel gap help with the dust in the basement? What brand of masonry paint did you use? Sorry for so many questions, but this is exactly what we are planning to do with our basement!

My (movie fanatyk) point of view on home media/ theater rooms....walls have to be darker (earthy tones) to give you that truly undistracted movie theater experience. Otherwise, the white (or bright) paint reflexes light off of the screen and screen fails to be a focal point while watching tv/movies.

Great point for the reflection of light the same problem happened to me. Try renovating the basement by adding color and texture. These stone panels can be put up in minutes and they help insulate your basement giving you the best of both worlds. Whether it is a man cave or a family retreat you can recreate it. Use furniture like the drawer in the picture below to complement the design in order to maximize floor space.

It was a lot of work, but worth it to us. Instead of Drylok, we used a masonry paint from Lowes that helps seal out mildew and moisture (can't think of the name). It was far less toxic than Drylok, and has turned out beautifully. We don't have moisture issues on our walls though, so we're lucky. Cementing the gravel gap has basically eliminated the dust. We didn't need it any more because we have a French drain/sump so that's why we cemented it. We did all the work ourselves and couldn't be happier with the result.

We left our ceilings exposed - just painted it all white so it was bright. It has a nice loft-like feel to it.

kjohnso that is also exactly what I am planning with my own basement! French drain, sump, painting the joists/ceiling white. How much height do you have from the floor to the bottom of the joists? I'd love to see more pictures to show my husband. Did you also mean to say that you did the french drain and sump yourself? I've gotten a couple quotes just for one wall and it was pretty pricey!

Mildew air freshener.

We just finished our basement - we built a 2 BR "mother in law suite" in the hopes that my parents will spend lots of time here. I just moved away from them after being 2 doors down for the last 10 years.
We still need the finishing touches, but it's comfortable (my husband jokes that he might stay down there :-)

We bought our home 3 years ago. The basement was our first major project. We added a family room, full bathroom and 2 bedrooms for our teenage children. Now they have their own space where they can hang out with friends ( as my house is the hang out spot). It's like they have their own apartment. If there was a refrigerator, we would rarely see them!

We did not do the french drain, that was done professionally. Our ceiling height is 7 ft from joist to floor. Here are some more pics

Our client has a walk out basement and wanted to shut out the light from the doors for movies and add to the look of his basement. Barn doors were his answer! We love that option!

we have a basement.
it's partially finished, but not pretty.
there's a "bedroom" down there, that my brother uses.

it needs redone.