In this entry, I will described what we've done so far. It's been about a year and a half since Karla and I moved in, and in that time we did some preparatory things, knowing that we'd like to finish the entire basement eventually.
Two main rooms were already completely finished when we moved in. A fully completed half-bath and one large room which turned into my computer room were dry-walled, painted, and had a drop-ceiling installed. Knowing that we'd be spending a pretty good amount of time in these finished portions during the time it would take to finish the rest of the basement, the first thing we did was seal the walls with a coat of Dry-Lock, and paint the floor with a concrete paint.
Early on last winter we realized that we had to do something with the heating in the basement. It was cold! Too cold for space heaters to handle. During a home-building expo we came across the idea installing a dual-zone heating system. This included adding a new set of duct-work that would completely heat the entire basement, and install a smart damper system. This smart damper system would automatically turn the dampers on and off for either the up-stairs or down-stairs as needed. This means that each floor would have an independently controlled thermostat.
For this job we hired a local heating and air-conditioning company - and they did a great job. Now in the winter, it's actually warmer in the basement than it is upstairs. While we had the dual zone system installed, the same company also moved our water heater to be more convieniently located for framing in with the rest of the utilities. This required some re-routing of water pipes around the new duct work for the dual zone system. It was well worth the price and I was able to frame in the furnace, water heater, and water softener. The blue lines in the floor plan below show the walls that I framed in.
