Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler CV's Subterranean Adventure

Thanks for the ideas, Chris. I'll show my dad your posts.

I assume you mean trapezoid, not parallelogram. At most, I could start angling one of the side walls at some point. If you look earlier in the thread, you can see a (former) friend's mock-up of what the basement would look like. Some of our ideas have strayed since then, but the basic layout is pretty close.

The right wall is the basement's concrete perimeter. It already has the 2x4s, insulation, and drywall from a while ago. I'm sure we want something like that on the face of the concrete all of the way around, but I'm not sure if there's a more ideal insulation/drywall combo than what's up. There is already a left wall up in the existing layout, but it will be taken out to do the flooring, then put back up in whatever way we decide to put it back up. As you can see, however, the wall doesn't extend the whole length of the basement, instead opening into the little kitchen area. Even if I angle the wall, it will still have to stop before that kitchen area, and I'm not sure how much benefit it would be versus the space lost.

Yeah, trapezoid. Oh no! Have all the advanced Maths pushed basic Geometry out of my head?

I forgot about the over-all shape of the area. The already irregular shape will help defeat the standing waves, so the angled walls are not as needed.

Although, if you're building walls, it's not that much more expensive to do more at the same time. Does the kitchen area have to be open? In the original sketches what is the big, solid blue area between the bedroom and the theater?

The blue space between the bedroom and theater is the bedroom closet.

The kitchen area does not have to be open, but physically looking at the space, it's hard to imagine wanting it to be walled off since it's so small. I think this is one of those compromises I'm going to have to make.

Cool advice on the doors Chris.

Also CV to add what Chris said on wall construction, if you double up the drywall, it can also help to use a different thickness of drywall for the 2nd layer. Or if you only do one layer use the thicker 5/8ths. They are much stiffer than the standard 1/2 inch.

I know, I know, I have the slowest basement renovation of anyone in the universe. I'm curious if any of you have had experience digging a basement deeper to add height. I know the low ceilings (probably only around 6 1/2 feet high after the suspended ceilings are in) are going to bug me, so I figured I'd better at least look into getting some more height down there.

My dad wants to eventually be able to rent out the basement as a separate living space from the ground floor. I thought he said there wasn't a minimum height requirement, but that's something I should make him double-check, I think. If we need more height to satisfy a local code, then we'd need to dig the whole basement deeper. If the height isn't an issue, then I'd be satisfied only digging deeper for the theater. I'm just wondering how much of an ordeal it would be. We'd have to hire someone with some real knowledge to oversee, but I'd have no problem doing a ton of the hauling out of the dirt and what not. I was hoping someone here might have actually done it at some point and could offer a little guidance up-front.

I'm really going to try to push to have the basement ready for my invasion by Summer. The new Axiom speakers are going to want a bigger, nicer room to play in, I think.

Who is Summer? You haven't told us about her yet.

Are you sure your dad isn't looking to rent it out to someone else now?

That's all I have: Batting "0" in helpful responses to you this morning.

Charles, I'm pretty sure my basement renovation of just one room is taking just as long as yours, if not longer. Seems to me we started at nearly the same time. My weekends always seem busy and It's been such a busy couple of years my evenings are mostly about regenerating what little energy I can through exercise or the total opposite of it, depending on the day.

I have no idea how much trouble that sort of a job would get into but I have only ever seen it done where they raise the house up to add or replace a foundation. Somehow, they have to have room to get heavy equipment under there so I'd say you and your parents would be looking at a major life disruption for the duration and I expect the cost would not be worth the effort unless it was absolutely necessary.

But hey, that's just conjecture on my part. Hopefully, someone can come along to prove that I was a pessimist and it can be done much easier than that.

I would also like to add some useless info
Your sewer line and your basement drain lines. How do they run from the house? If you dig deeper than the piping heading out from your house (especially the basement drains) what do you plan to do with these lines? I agree with Murph that the easiest solution would be to raise the house a couple of feet.

You think "Your" basement project is going slow.....

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I still need to talk to my dad about it, see what he knows that I don't.