As I've mentioned in the past, I'm renting half of this house from my parents. Currently I'm on the ground floor, and they're in the basement. They're using my rent money to make renovations to the house. My dad wants to rent this house later on so he'll have some extra income. I plan on renting the whole thing for a while, but we're making the ground floor and basement entirely separate in anticipation of him renting to other people in the future.

We just made a new stairwell (well, it's still in the process) to the basement so the existing one in the house can be taken out, which will also add floorspace to both levels. However, I don't think any of the renovations have gone as well as I'd like them to, so I thought I should run any more major changes by you guys just so we may avoid some pitfalls. I'll draw up the current layout as well as the basic plan for the new layout (major wall to be knocked out to make most of the basement a big, open area--not the dedicated home theater I want, but my dad won't budge). I look forward to any feedback. In the meantime, my dad's already asking me about flooring, so I'll start with that.

What would you do for flooring? I'm hoping for thin (as the basement is short, and it's going to have a suspended ceiling, making it even shorter), durable, easy to maintain. Of course not so expensive would be nice, since I have other priorities. I don't want to carpet, but rather just use rugs.

So what do you think? Any strong opinions? It would be nice to be able to respond to my father being somewhat informed. Thanks for any advice you may have!

I'll be posting a lot more questions as the endeavor progresses.

All right, I guess I don't need advice on the flooring right away. It sounds like he wants to concentrate on some other stuff first. I would still like to know more than what I can glean through the little online guides to flooring, but at least now there's no time pressure. I'm just scared of everything being done without enough planning. My dad can have a tendency to do that. Me, I'd rather have everything planned out beforehand so it's done right the first time and the end result matches the original vision.

What exactly do you need help with? This is a pretty vast subject.

Just ignore me for now. When I have specific questions, I'll pop back in here. Before I even ask anything specific, I'm hoping to have the layout drawn up as well as list the goals for the space. Thanks!

I now wished I used bamboo. Renewable resource, durable, and looks cool.
Was impossible to get here 2 years ago without paying big premiums, now all the flooring stores carry it.

Yeah, bamboo is awesome. Makes great cutting boards, too.

I used this bamboo when I remodeled our bedroom iFloor
Very durable,inexpensive, great looking and not to difficult to install.

My best friend went with bamboo in his basement. I'll have to look into it.

I'm going to revive this thread, but I don't know how much of what has already been said is going to be relevant. My dad's going to want to do more work again soon, so I wanted to mock up a plan of the layout. Thankfully, one of my former coworker's friends just got her Bachelor of Architecture degree, and, unable to find work in her field so far, she's now working in our department, and she was hungry for a project in which she could employ some of her knowledge. I suggested I may need her services in order to draw up the layout of my basement so I could share with you guys and get your feedback. She came over tonight and made a really fast, not-to-scale drawing of the basic layout with the measurements, then made a model in Google SketchUp Pro with the anticipated layout (which she'll refine after some more time, but I thought I'd jump the gun to give you all an idea of what my space might turn out to look like). I can't give you the current layout at the moment, but I'll post the few pictures of the SketchUp model that she emailed me, and I'll describe what I can of what's different from the current layout.



Currently, there's actually a wall where it shows the beam over the couch, and that beam actually runs full across the basement, supported by probably three beams. There are two in the wall that we're planning on knocking down, and she's going to calculate whether or not the beam that currently exists where we'd like the seating to be can be moved to the extreme right before the ledge around the perimeter. Her estimation is that it should be feasible, which would certainly be nice. Otherwise, I may not be able to get away with two rows of seating, since a beam could interfere with the people in the rear seating.

The bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette area are not currently divided like that. The bedroom is actually even tinier right now, since there's another stairwell coming down the right side of that space, which the one in the mock-up replaces. The bedroom also does not open directly into the bathroom like that. There's empty space between the two.

She was thinking the heavy curtain idea would be best for blocking the stairwell entrance during movie watching.





Hopefully this gives you enough of an idea of my current plan so you can tear it apart.

Wow, what a great program. Beam supports are a big hassle in basements. Looks like your layout would work but are you planning to isolate the kitchenette from the HT area with a curtain or something else to define the area better?
Don't mind me I wish I could do something in my basement.
Mel N.