Renovating your basement

A little hidden gem within the house is our basement. Like the rest of the house, this room was unloved, damp and falling apart. We had serious mould on the walls, the stair case was rotten and we could see that the ceiling was falling through. We had no option but to renovate this part of the house straight away.

 

 

 

 

I have heard some horror stories when it comes to basement renovation work. The chances are, the water levels will be higher than your basement walls, therefore you will ideally need to invest in a decent taking system to ensure that you don’t have any issues in the future with damp.

We worked with our builder to find the best possible tanking solution for us. In the end we opted for a sump pump system which has piping running below the basement floor and a pump that pushes water away from the basement and into the external drains of our property. This system is constantly working but is unbelievably quiet and costs very little to run.

As I have mentioned, it was our builders advice that led us to choose this contraption and it has worked perfectly since we had it fitted 18 months ago. Remember, basement renovations aren’t cheap and you will most likely uncover problems you weren’t expecting. Whatever budget you put aside for this work, I would most definitely advise you to double it!

When doing a project like a basement renovation, don’t just use any builder. Make sure you choose a specialist who understands the complexity of renovating a basement. We had roughly 6 builders look into renovating our basement. 2 ran scared and never got back to us with a quote. 2 said they could easily do it but their portfolio in no way suggested they could and 1 was way over our budget. We were so lucky to finally find a basement specialist who had vast experience and was able to advise us and give us solid peace of mind every step of the way. Anyone from the North West of England who is looking to use a basement specialist should definitely consider using our chosen builder Aidan Vallely who runs and owns elite basements. Aidan and Danny, of elite basements were professional throughout our renovation, they never moaned even when conditions were grim and the renovation went over the expected time-scale. Through hard labour they managed to pull the time back and complete our basement renovation to an incredibly high standard.

 

Below is a short story board of how the basement started to take shape:

 

The beauty of the sump pump system meant that we could also plum in a toilet and piping for a sing and potentially a washing machine. We decided to turn the back of our basement into a utility room area and the front of our basement into a second living area, although my boyfriend likes to call it his games room…

In the end, for safety reasons we had to remove the flooring from the first floor as this simply wasn’t safe enough for Aidan and Danny for work under. We originally had 1 metre long Yorkshire slate flags weighing over 1 ton per flag resting above the basement on small wooden beams. Aidan replaced these wooden beams with 2 large RSJ’s and then new wooden beams, finally he fitted new flooring above the basement.

This picture shows the new beams in place before the new flooring went on top.

 

Our basement was technically already classed as a room therefore we didn’t need planning permission, however we had building regulations sign this renovation off at every major step of the way to ensure that it can ‘legally’ be classed as a liveable room. From my knowledge, If you do not involve building regulations through out a major renovation of a room like a basement or attic then this can not be classed as a room when you come to sell your house and you could end up spending a lot of money but not making any profit when it comes to selling your house. Definitely make sure you look into this before starting such a project.

Step 1

We renovated every room in our house so I can hopefully give you an idea on each individual room.

Take advantage of the first week to clear out anything left behind from the previous resident. in our case the previous resident had left the (not so nice) curtains so we kept hold of these. these proved invaluable for protecting the floor while painting and the car while lugging bits to the tip.

If you’re not too bothered about your car getting dusty then definitely use this as your main means of transport to discard of rubbish from the house, this will save you a lot of money compared to buying a tip. Once you have complete clarity of the house and you can see all floors, walls and ceilings, then you’re ready to devise a plan of what needs doing first and how you go about doing this. In our case our house was not liveable, therefore we had free reign of the whole house. Once all objects were out of the house, including all kitchen units we then started to pull up the carpets too. Once you have done this…step back and be clear on exactly what needs doing throughout the house

Where it all began

For many people the idea of buying a house, then spending over a year renovating it is a huge ‘NO GO’ area. The idea of both your evenings and weekends being taken over by stripping wallpaper, knocking down walls and ripping up carpets can be a burden on both your personal time and bank balance!! However for the rare few this idea can be one of the most adventurous and rewarding experiences to ever partake in.

For myself and my partner, buying our first home together was a huge step for us. We were fortunate enough to have already renovated a house previous to our own and learnt a lot of do’s and don’ts along the way. We were both brought up in ‘new build’ houses, small rooms and magnolia walls, so knew we wanted the complete opposite. On the same wave length, we started to search the market with our long list of what we wanted from our home and most importantly what we could afford.

This blog is for the rare few: I always get asked from friends for advice on how we did certain things in our home and often get told how beautiful it looks inside, therefore I have decided to create this blog as an aid for people in the same situation that we were in when we bought our first house, I will hopefully give you some useful tips, not only on how to renovate your house but also after all the dust settles, how to make your house into a beautiful home.