3 Tips to Finishing Your Basement

Having a basement in your home provides extra space that can be used to accommodate friends, relatives, and excess items that need to be stored. It’s also a safe haven when the hurricane comes around. In fact, most basements are designed like any other home that has a kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and a living room. It’s important you draft a plan of the basement so that you can know where to start. You must, therefore, budget for the project because it’s obvious you will need to buy building materials. As a matter of fact, you can’t finish your basement in an overnight. And maybe that’s why some people prefer to hire a contractor. Below are some tips that can help a beginner that has never finished a basement before.

1. Work on the Walls

Before you start working on the walls, it’s advisable you first clean them using a brush that has bristles that are made from metal. This helps in removing any mold that might have accumulated. If you apply finish on dirty walls, you will end up with an interior outlook that’s not as elegant as you intended it to be. Once the walls are clean, you should proceed by installing water pipes to ensure that the basement has an adequate supply of water to save you from the trouble of having to get water from the house above.

Since plumbing is crucial, you should delegate the task to an experienced plumber in your area. It’s also important you install power connections in this phase of the project so that the cables can be concealed alongside water pipes. This means that you will have to call in a local residential electrician to do all the wiring works. When all the plumbing and electrical wiring is done, you should install a painted drywall to cover them.

2. The Ceiling

A bare ceiling looks dull. The wires and water pipes when they are not covered with finish. Besides that, it doesn’t prevent the noise coming from the basement from being heard by the people in the main house. Such noise can be very disturbing especially if you have a gaming room in the basement. Installing the ceiling is pretty simple. All you have to do is measure the space and the materials then install the studs that will be used for holding the panels or drywall. The advantage of installing the ceiling is that you can paint it with colors that blend with the furniture.

3. Install the Floor

A concrete floor is not enough for a basement. This is because the room is usually cold most of the time, especially during wet weather. You can opt for either ceramic tiles or wooden floor. If you install a ceramic floor, you will need to cover it with a woolen carpet to make it warm. On the other hand, a wooden floor will require you to spray the basement with a humidifier when the weather is too hot to prevent the wood from warping. Besides that, when the weather is wet or cold, you will need to put a heater in the basement because it helps in keeping the wooden floor dry.

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