mason82

Finishing my basement on the cheap. It's not needing to be a very fancy basement with big entertainment room, bar etc.. It needs to be practical, and I want two guest rooms for tenants/borders.

I am looking for somewhere to get ideas on layouts for this type of reno.

Thanks!

oldognewtrick

Mason, i guess the first place to start is what utilities are in the basement, do you have to deal with furnaces/water heaters? How many total square feet are available? What about plumbing service? Do you have room for seperate baths? What about codes, will they allow for you to transfom your house into a multi-family unit? Do you have seperate egress windows for the seperate units? Meters, how are you planning to handle who pay for utilities? I'm sure theres more, but I guess we can start here.

...oh and to House Repair Talk!

nealtw

If you are just planning and want to know if things fit, I would suggest duct tape on the floor to mark out walls, closets and doorways. Keep in mind that walls are finnished at 4.5" thick and allow 5" for the wall next to concrete. Hallways should be 36inches wide and a 30" door requires a 32" opening in the wall. Closets are 24" deep on the inside. Each bedroom requires an egress window a size dictated by local code. If you are just planning on boarders you will still need most of what Oldog suggested, no kitchen.

3gmp

Also you should be aware of any soffits you have because of heating and other duct work. We had to design placement of bedroom doors to avoid placing them under the soffits so the doors wouldn't be cut down.

You may want to draw the basic outline to scale on graph paper, cut strips of paper to indicate 5' thick walls and play with the layout there.