There may be some challenges – noise, making room, keeping up appearance – you will face when remodeling your basement. Don’t despair, there’s always a way out.
Noise
Many homeowners are very unhappy to discover that their basement was quiet for only one reason–nobody ever went down there. After converting the unused area to a recreation room, they sadly discover that the rock n’ roll blasts adult peace upstairs. If this might be your problem make sure that an acoustical tile ceiling is part of the rebuilding job down-stairs.
As any sound engineer can tell you, noise can be most easily stopped at its source. Acoustical ceiling tile will keep the sound that originates in a basement recreation area from being carried throughout the house. Understand it won’t do what’s known in high pressure circles as a “hundred per cent job,” but it will be effective enough to make the project well worth your while.
Making Room
For quite some time now the “open plan” idea has been very popular in homes. Many families are quite pleased with the way that eliminating unnecessary walls and doors can make a small home seem larger. This same concept is growing in popularity below ground level. If this appeals to you, you might give up the idea of separating furnace room from utility room from recreation room.
If you have a modern heating unit that’s relatively noise-free, you might devote some thought to the idea of leaving it out in the main area without partitioning the rig off from view. Most of today’s units are housed in simple cabinets of fairly decent proportions. To minimize the furnace room look, cover the gadget with whatever wall surface you are using for the basement room — paint it to match the trim or cover it with wallpaper.
Steel Columns
No basement is complete without steel columns. At least that seems to be the pattern 90 per cent of the time. Since these structural bits of steel keep the upstairs from folding into the basement it’s impossible to move them. The only thing left is camouflage. Here, take a tip from the rest of your recreation room decor. If it’s nautical, wrap the posts with manila rope.
Turn the thing into a palm tree to go with a south-seas atmosphere. Buy a bunch of fake ivy and have it trailing out of a pot overhead and spiraling down the posts. Build a suspended room divider spanning two posts. The possibilities, as you can see, are endless.
Dealing with Drawbacks
Most remodeling drawbacks can be easily solved if they’re approached not as problems but as challenges. Many attics, for example, are made with semi-dormers in which the windows partially project above the slanting roof. To most people this is a decorating defect and they can’t see any possibility of painting or papering their way out of it.
One young couple solved this problem and in the process turned a drawback into a striking decorative treatment. Using nothing but fabric, they transformed the window alcove into a fake canopy that looked just elegant. To set off the pseudo-formal treatment, they coated the walls with a light gold latex paint. The stuff rolled on easily, dried in an hour and left the room ready for use the very same day.
Another family used a nautical decor in their basement playroom. The windows were typical basement windows, set high in the walls and quite ineffective as far as admitting light was concerned. They simply said, “to heck with the idea of trying to get any light out of the windows, we’ll turn them into portholes.”
They made batten doors that fitted the rectangular window openings. In the center of these doors (they were actually hinged so that they could drop down) the homeowners cut a circle and fitted in a porthole cover purchased at a marine supply store. The final effect was quite striking and this treatment had one more advantage. Whenever the window is needed (it’s used mostly for unloading lumber into a hobby shop) the entire batten door drops down for easy access.
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