Catching Up

I'm starting this blog a bit late -- I started working on finishing my basement in late 2005, and today, I've decided to share and document the experience. Since I'm behind, I'm going to have to do a bit of catching up.....

The Beginning

The basement was unfunished when we moved in (the picture of the house shows it in the summer of '05, note the pregnant Katie on the porch). We wanted to finish it, but with Jackson Wesley coming in September, didn't have a lot of time at first (well, haven't had much time since either) ,so the project was delyaed until late 2005. While, I have done some basic work around the house (replacing switches, some painting, some really basic carpentry), I had never done anything on the level of finishing a basement. So, the first thing I had to decide was what, if anything, I was going to do myself. I called up a couple of the thousand or so general contractors which deposited their adverts in my mailbox and door (any new development is ripe for this paper deluge). Based on the size and the type of rooms I was thinking about, the ball-park estimates ranged from $20K-$50K, so certainly anything I could do myself should be well worth my time. Of course, this necessitates some type of time-value analysis. My friend Brian actually has spent a bit of time trying to anaylze what his time was worth, but perhaps that's the subject of another blog....

So, after thinking about it, i decided to take on as much as I could. I figure this had the following advantages:

• I would save a lot of money
• There was no big time rush, since the house sans basement would be big enough for Katie, Jackson, myself
• I'd learn how to do a bunch of contruction-related stuff
• I'd get to buy a lot of cool tools

So, with this in-depth analysis, and not much knowledge, I embarked on this journey....

The Research

Ok, I didn't know much about finishing my basement, but I at least I know I didn't know much. So, starting at about the time Jackson was born, I searched for some help. The resource I liked the best was the book: Remodeling a Basement. This was a pretty good book which gave a lot of how-to info, partnered with some good design ideas. It was designed more for people like me who didn't have too much experience. Addiitonally, there were some good web-sites, papers, and books that offered design ideas, which is probably the trickiest part of the job

So, as of late september, I was off reading through material to figure out what I wanted to do with my basement, and then what tasks I felt like I could accomplish myself...