Before you spend thousands of dollars on a room addition, take a short trip downstairs and have a look at your basement. Remodeling a basement is one of the easiest, cheapest ways to add usable square footage to your house without a grade level room addition. Basement remodels take up no additional land area and don’t take away from your home’s existing architectural style.
Play Areas, Teen Hangouts, & Music Studios
Don’t think of your basement simply as a place to store holiday decorations, place sports equipment that you think you will use someday, and send your kids when they are bad. If you maintain an open mind, your basement can be anything you want (well, almost). Take advantage of your basement’s “faults” such as isolation and darkness. Since basements are separated from the rest of the house on a lower floor, and are partially or completely underground, the surrounding earth acts as a sound barrier. This makes the basement ideal for noisy activities.
Exercise Rooms & Recreation Room
You can take advantage of the large open space in your basement by turning it into an exercise room or recreation room. Since a basement sub-floor is almost always concrete, which doesn’t transmit sound or vibration; you can go crazy on the treadmill without making the house shake like a 7.0 earthquake. You can carpet a portion of the room so that you will have a cushioned area for stretching, sit ups or running in place. If you are concerned about lugging your vacuum down the basement steps, you consider using interlocking rubber mats instead.