Sixth House Renovation Plan - The Basement
Hello there! This should be a short post for the last post in the month of May. When last we met we were wrapping up the second floor with the renovation plans for the master suite. Today we will talk about the basement and then next week we will move on to talk about the finishes, fixtures, and decorating schemes for the rooms. We will be starting to dream about the pretty part.
The basement in this house includes an unfinished utility room, a large open finished space, a full bathroom and one of the smallest storage closets known to man. I tried to convince John that it would be the perfect home office space for him and he did not think that was very funny. I did. And I still think we shouldn't rule it out as a possibility.
Here are the listing photos of the space and one photo from me showing the bathroom (another bathroom not included in the listing photos:-).




The plans for the basement are pretty simple:
Remove the wet bar and refrigerator
Build a wall with glass French pocket doors across the area where the existing "kitchenette area" is to provide dedicated gym space
Push the entire refrigerator wall back into the utility room to be flush with the current depth behind the actual refrigerator for added gym space
Facelift for the basement bathroom
We also have in our plans to open up the stairs which we talked about in a previous post
Here is the blueprint of the basement for bearings. The utility room is under the kitchen and powder room/laundry room on the right hand side of the blueprint.

The storage room, which is next to the bathroom, and the wet bar/refrigerator area next to the utility room are not listed on the blueprints - they must have been upgrade requests during construction, I'm guessing???
Here is the graph paper design I did initially:

Before we moved in I wasn't certain if the wall shared by the utility space and what will become the gym could span the entire length of the room or needed to stop so that the existing doorway between the two spaces stayed where it was. After moving in, I saw that there is no issue with extending the wall for the entire space.
Our plan for the basement is to use it as the primary family room. Our longtime wish that we talked about in the fifth house basement tour of having a pool/ping pong table will hopefully be realized in this basement. It is also really important to me to have a home gym, and I'm so pleased to see that it is also becoming very important to my children, so we for sure need to dedicate some floorspace to that. The bathroom needs a "Home Depot" renovation. Nothing fancy, just change everything lol. I do want to get a new vanity, new toilet, new tile floor, and would love to have a tile shower with niches. When John found out he had Covid I quarantined in the basement, sleeping on an air mattress and using this bathroom. The tub/shower is builder grade for sure. There is not a soap dish nor is there room to put a bottle of shampoo in it. If, hopefully when, we have guests and they are using that bathroom I would like it to be a level up (at least).
When I first started talking to Brenda Parker (the architect) about my plans I didn't give her any information on the basement changes to make plans from because the changes were so minor that it seemed unnecessary. After talking with Brenda about the need for permit plans for everything it just made sense to include the basement as well, so I sent her the marked up blueprints that follow to note the location of the sink and refrigerator since these were not on her original set of blueprints.
Existing plan:

Revised plan:

This is what Brenda came back with after we talked through everything:

The renovation plan gives us a gym that is about 10' x 12' which will be lovely and we will have plenty of space overall for a TV area, game area, and pool/ping pong table space. The gym will not have a window to the outside which is why I want the pocket doors to be glass. This will give light from the main space, there is actually a lot of natural light thankfully, and cordon off the space at the same time.
Here is the original blueprint marked up with the changes:

Lastly, the marked up listing photos. I will spare you mark ups on the bathroom photo as everything will stay in the same place.



There we have it! The entire inside bones of our sixth house reimagined. Thank you for following along thus far. I hope you have, or had depending on when you're reading this, a terrific Memorial Day weekend and I will see you next time.
Thank you for visiting today,
Kerry
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