Home Series: Some Cool Ideas for Your Vancouver Basement Renovations – Consult with Bruce Coleman, Vancouver Mortgage Broker
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Some Cool Ideas for Your Vancouver Basement Renovations
Basements have a bit of a bad reputation and many people who have one tend to not fully develop and use them to their best advantage.
After all, the basement is “downstairs” so many folks out there don’t really do a lot with them. You prefer to focus on your living space upstairs on the ground and upper floors or even to the exterior such as landscaping or adding a deck.
However, even though the basement contains the core functions of our home such as the furnace, water heater and laundry facilities, there is still usually plenty of room to be creative and innovative to add some high value extra living space that can be very attractive to buyers.
With a little imagination and some careful thought to the materials, and of course, depending on your budget, why not transform your basement into something spectacular.
You can easily create a separate room that is functional and suitable to use as your utility and furnace room. Adding some shelving can help you neatly store away a lot of your seasonal toys or other memorabilia. The rest of the available space is all yours to play with and turn into something special.
The materials you use can vary ranging from simple sheet rock to something more elaborate such as using brick, stone, wood or even marble. How you use lighting and colour can also greatly enhance the appearance of the room depending on the motif and style that you want to adopt for your new living space. You can change the stairs and make them more suitable and eye appealing.
You are only limited by you imagination, the space you have to work with, and the amount you can afford to spend. Don’t forget that you can always use the equity you have built up in the house and obtain a HELOC or Home Equity Line of Credit to complete your dream project in style.
To ensure that everything is done to comply with the local building code, you will need to get applicable permits to perform the work. Unless, you’re especially handy, you would best be advised to contract the work to an experienced contractor.
Ideas for Your Basement Renovation
Here are some things to consider for your living space downstairs.
Living Room – Yes, you can actually have 2 living rooms instead of just the one upstairs. This would be an ideal situation especially if have younger children or teenagers. Everybody gets their own space to hang out and can be use for entertaining friends.
Media or Gaming Room – You can set up whatever electronic gadgets that you and your family are into, ranging from projectors and large screen televisions or game consoles or anything else. Of course, you could be more traditional and opt for a pool table, dart board and shuffle board motif.
Wet Bar – You could go all the way with this and make a really snazzy area to entertain your adult friends. A wet bar can be designed in a variety of ways ranging from a traditional wood bar to something more modern such as marble or other more expensive materials.
Wine Cellar – If you’re a wine connoisseur, then set create you very own wine cellar because it can perfectly suitable for a lower temperature.
Hoe Gym – Why spend a lot of money and time at a gym when you can do it all downstairs? You could even toss in a nice soothing sauna to ease away all those aches and pains from your strenuous work out.
Home Office – With all the hustle and bustle upstairs, it’s probably hard to finish a day’s work when things got to get done. With your home office downstairs you can work in peace and quiet, or have a separate office to manage you business if you’re self employed.
A Man Cave – Well, this can be anything you want it to be such as work or hobby area or just about anything that suits your particular “guy thing.”
Kid’s Playroom – It’s a good place to keep the kids localized and occupied. You could even install a camera so you can do what you’re doing upstairs and check out the kids at the same time.
Guest Room – If you get a lot of visits from family then rather giving up your rooms or bunching people all together, you can build a comfortable space for your guests downstairs, replete with bathroom facilities if you so choose.
The other cool thing about basements is that they can evolve over time and be changed according to your changing needs and desires. And, finally, the other neat thing about basements is that they be used in combination with all the potential ideas listed above.
