basement building Archives - My Suburban Kitchen

Basement Reno: Lessons Learned from Drywalling

September 17, 2012 By Shannah 3 Comments

Ok, so say you’re building a house or maybe finishing a basement. One of the key components of that is going to be walls, right?

Well, when adding drywall to those walls, there are a few key things to think about:
1) How much sound proofing do you want in those walls? Sure, you can insulate to provide some sound deadening. BUT, if you are going to be using it as a music or theater area, you might consider getting specialty sound proofing drywall like QuietRock.

We used the QuietRock in the theater area walls and ceiling.

It is usually denoted by a different color as you can see here:

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Basement Reno: Up Go the Walls

March 13, 2012 By Shannah 3 Comments

Shoved somewhere between dance, dinner club and other errands, we Mathlete managed to make some basement progress. I take partial credit since I was on full time kid duty while Mathlete worked in the basement.

See all those wood beams? Yep, that is framing of a wall. We have wall framing…at least in parts of the basement.

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Basement Planning

January 9, 2012 By Shannah 3 Comments

Remember Mathlete and his planning bug? Well, we are moving right along with those plans! Over the holiday break, Mathlete went over and picked up our building permit.

Yep, sorry neighbors…we are those people with the bright orange poster in the window.
While he has dreams of lumber and electrical wiring, I have my little mind churning on what will go in the rooms once they are all built. Want to see a few?

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Going Down Under

November 21, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

Sadly, we aren’t talking about an upcoming trip to Australia today. We are talking about Mathlete and his planning bug. What is he planning you ask? His current focus (his only focus?) right now has been on planning our future basement renovation. Right now, our basement is home to a bunch of our junk, my crafting area (no, Mathlete, those are not redundant items) and maybe some random bugs. Hopefully, by this time next year, that will be a thing of the past.

I have been complaining to sharing with my mom the ongoing planning of this basement project. It isn’t that I am not excited about having a finished basement because I definitely am. Right now, it is in the stage where I can’t picture it and it is mostly talk about electrical, plumbing and drywall. You didn’t fall asleep there, did you?

Enter Floor Planner which allows you to create 2D and 3D floorplans to help people like me get excited about what is to come in a given space. Obviously, I left all the fun design stuff to Mathlete and just waited for the finished plan to land in my inbox {I did hold the tape measure for the measuring portion of this project}. Want to take a look at our current {stage 1} draft plan?
First, in 2D

Now, in super fabulous 3D

As you can see, the plan for the basement to have storage, a theater area, a wet bar, bedroom and bathroom. Where will my craft stuff be relocated to? It is a little difficult to tell but the bedroom we’ve designed is HUGE. So, my craft stuff will reside in there.
Once I got a picture of how it will look in my mind, I started planning different elements. My first focus was the bar area. I’ll share my plans with you for that space in an upcoming post!

Have you ever done a basement remodel? Any tips to share?

Floor Planner has no idea who I am and I was in no way compensated to talk about their website. We just found them the easiest to use for this part of our basement planning.