This Basement Finishing Secret will Save you a FORTUNE!

so today we are talking basements and we're going to show you a video we shot a few years ago and we're gonna discuss later how to get the most economical basement renovation that you can get and we're going to show you how to save a lot of money I haven't run into a house that has square walls loved working on these old homes these are my bread and butter I gotta say this for exactly comfort Wow wow that's actually a rain cloud the whole ground is even perfect every time [Music] well today we're talking basics got a lot of our clients asking us to finish the space in the basement for them so what we're doing today is we're in every one of our homes we're gonna go over a basic basement renovation the idea is is we have a half constructed space that we're just going to finish all right so in this particular basement about 20 years old a construction style of the day was such that they did fold 2x4 construction to the floor 16 inches on center a regular bad insulation what you would be very traditional more modern construction now you're only framing halfway down they're using a blanket wrap instead so homes that are this age have an advantage because they can be almost finished from their current condition you can see what we've done is we've just lifted up the plastic tucked up the insulation back under itself this is just in preparation for our electrician trying to minimize as much time as he has to be on this site that way he can just drill those holes and run his wires without any any hesitation the process for finishing this is quite simple because they use kiln dry lumber you can see that the wall is still pretty straight we're just gonna go around with a proper straight line level identify beams that are you know warped or bent or prop improperly instead installed you can see this one here we've got lots of movement but we're gonna have to do here is just cut this beam straighten it I've thrown a shim and a screw just fix it up and then we're basically ready after the electrician is done to drywall the space in this kind of situation there's not a whole lot of preparation to do outside of a couple of mechanical issues like most basements all of the heat runs come out of the ceiling you can see over here you've got a long run coming out of the ceiling this particular heat one is here to kill the draft from the windows but in other parts of the house the heat runs are also in the ceiling for convenience so what we have is a we've framed this wall to isolate the living space from the furnace area temporarily we have it covered in plastic just to keep the dust down they have a mid efficiency furnace so they do have fresh air mixed the air in the basement going to the house so we're just doing this for desk control but eventually what we'll do is it behind this wall will bring two heat runs down right to the floor basements it's very difficult to keep warm when you're in the sitted position generally whatever heat comes from the ceiling tends to come about halfway down and then start working his way back up again so what we found is the best way is not to just Ansel ate the floor but to bring the heat right to the floor and then on the other side of the room we'll bring in a cold air return right to the floor pulling the air across the floor keeping the air that's warm at the as low as we can as long as we can there's a couple of things we have to overcome one of them is the steel i-beams other one is ductwork and of course we always have plumbing and wiring and air conditioning lines this air conditioning line comes right through the area that we're going to put our theater room in so on this half of the bulkhead we're gonna have to strap our ceiling an inch and a half which is a solid 2x4 and then we can put in our drywall the rest of the room we just have to go back with someone by threes 16 inch on center of course lots of screw surface for our drywall and all of the rest of these beams will all have to be covered in boxes and drywall beam this particular house is a typical construction they have these new beams in here they're basically laminated plywood layers they're very strong then they protect against deflection and they have extremely wide spacing this is not a sixteen inch on center I think these are more like a around 22 so what we've got going on is we're going to strap the other direction give a channel for our electrician to run all of his wires and give us an ability to actually strengthen the floor above as well whenever we have a soft floor or considerations in the future the engineers always tell us if you put strapping in the basement it'll double the strength of the floor above because it's treads out stretches out the load-bearing weight there's a lot of schools of thought concerning how to insulate or put in a subfloor in a basement our basic approach is really quite simple everybody's seen on TV shows how they use the the dimpled product out here to waterproof the exterior of the house well what the other application for this is you can actually put it on the floor and roll it out and create that barrier between the con in your subfloor one of the advantages because it's six-and-a-half feet long you only have one joint every six-and-a-half feet for the whole length of the basement so there's really only two tape joints in this whole room a few hundred square feet now our joints are taped with duct tape which makes a it's impossible for moisture to get through that into our subflooring subfloor we used as a chipboard true floor subfloor it's 5/8 thick tongue-and-groove it weaves together then we tapcon it down and screw it right into the concrete this makes a nice air space between the concrete and the floor which is insulator airspace is an insulator it's also nice and quiet and gives us a subfloor that we can put any kind of surface on you can go over top of this and do ceramic tile or hardwood for instance if you wanted to one of the important things to consider when you're doing a basement renovation especially nowadays everybody has it seems like a bathroom in the basement that's roughed in so they've got the pipes already pre placed underneath the concrete and there's a lot of temptation there to go ahead and finish the job without getting a city inspector involved we've all seen the TV shows we don't advise that get the inspection it's it's worth its weight in gold here we have laundry sink and the stack we just convenient because the client wants a two piece bath so we've just framed in real simple for them we've opened up the hole to identify where our pipe is we kind of had a feeling that was running across here just because of there's a clean-out in the other corner across the room that pipe is PVC it's not abs like the stack pipe so you know for all of you who don't know you need the special glue to connect those two together so we just use the bosch chipper open up a hole dig out the gravel plumbers gonna come in and do all the rough and work for us then we're gonna call the city up and they have a special plumbing inspector who's gonna come by and take a look at this job once he gives us the okay to close up then we'll be back in next week to do the drywall electrician comes tomorrow we've got marked on all of our doors where the hinges go very important so he knows exactly what's the head to the door to put the light switch you don't want the lights which is all hiding in behind the hinges on the door so he'll be down tomorrow do all the rough-in and running the wires and and a few more days mechanical will be done and then it's time to get dirty and drywall it up hey I get to play again and of course whenever you renovate you always want to have your fan and ductwork nearby so you can pump that dirty air out the window and keep it out of the house okay so before we go any further and we show you how it all turned out let's talk about some of the rough and decisions that we made on this project and how it can pertain to you and your cost-effectiveness when you've got a basement you've seen that we did a subfloor system in there back when we shot that video vinyl plank flooring wasn't on the market yet and it was being introduced but it was very thin it was just a surface cover nowadays we have a luxury vinyl plank this gives us a lot more flexibility because we don't necessarily need a subfloor system unless you know you're having a moisture problem so if your house is dry or you're not expecting to have moisture issues because of the style of basement you can just go with vinyl right on the concrete you can do the same with laminate as well they do have products now that are water resistant I just don't like trapping moisture on my floor which is why I tend to push towards the subfloor concept but if you're looking for economical you could just put your flooring right on the concrete now in terms of the bathroom this basement didn't have and when we got started and they were finishing the basement so that it off operate as an office and as a living space my basic idea is this if you're going to have a living space on any level of a house you need to have at least a two piece bath on that level people just are not very attracted to a house that has a finished living space but doesn't have a bathroom on that level for a lot of different reasons so it's worth it financially basically anytime you have a living space without a bathroom on a on a floor open your floor put in the bathroom those dollars are returned to you and if you're smart with your purchases and your fixtures you'll get that money back when you sell your house guaranteed not even a question don't even think twice about it okay you don't have to necessarily put in a custom shower but at least a two-piece for the simple vanity and a toilet is fine and if you're in a situation where opening the floor is not a or you're nowhere near the plumbing vertical lines underneath the floor you can always go with another product called Santa flow it's got pumps on it and you can take that waste water from your sinking toilet and you can direct it through the rafters anywhere into that basement needs to go very effective if you're out in the country or on a septic guru and that kind of system so now I got people asking me all the time what kind of flooring should I use in my basement what's the cheapest option right and so basically your cheapest option is anything that's going to get you about a dollar 20 to a dollar 50 a square foot and you can get that in a laminate floor you might be able to find a deal on a really thin vinyl that way but you can definitely get that on carpet now carpet is good for basements I know everybody's thinking carpet you're gonna get that musty moldy smell but you don't as long as you install it on an under pad that's designed for concrete floors okay there are under pads out there that will not transfer the moisture into your carpet and you will get great performance out of that for a lot of years and that is definitely an option because it also gives you that feeling of it being a lot more comfortable and warm so here's the basic basement drop your heat to the floor just get a basic insulation going on with a good vapor barrier simple flooring and you have a living space if you want a really beautiful living space you probably already have one upstairs so if you're looking for simple expansion of your home get it in the basement I'm telling you right now you can renovate 800 square feet for less than ten thousand dollars materials and electrician that's the honest truth [Music] we're just gonna go over some of the features of a very basic basement renovation to traditional with basements we've got pillars and posts some of them have got sewer lines in them so there's a clean oh by code we have a spring-loaded trap door in the wall so you can access that clean Oh over here we have another spring-loaded door on the ceiling this is their access the shut-off fellow for the hose Bibb outside this is a wonderful diffuser for the heat system in the wintertime we can open this right up for you lots of heat in the summertime we can dial it back down it's just a simple touch and that keeps the air conditioning from pumping into the base but it doesn't need a whole lot of help again basic trim is basic paints we have entertainment center over here so we've got cat5 wiring we've got two coax cable and all the other things pre-wired surround system it's all pre-wired so that after the TV goes in the client I'll have everything all hooked up and sit there with all of his remotes and enjoy that this side of the wall over here behind this wall we've extended two heat runs off the main trunk line and bringing the heat right to the floor and these are adjustable as well and what this does is solves the problem with heat in the basement by bringing the heat under pressure from a five inch to a four inch line builds up pressure and blows all the way across the floor so in the future especially these clients are about to have their first baby and the little gaffer starts crawling around it'll be nice and warm down here for them I would sign of that although the lights here on dimmer switches everything is own so we have hallway we have that room area we have this room area all Isolators have an individual control now let's just talk real quick I was a homeowner how much of this project you can do on your own very key because the value that you get in your home in a basement is actually overall very low okay you don't get a lot of return on your investment when you finish a basement space so if you want to keep your return on investment close to your cost then you really want to be able to do a lot of this yourself this minute you start hiring people to do this work for you you're only gonna see a return of around 50 cents on the dollar and it'll take years to recover that on the investment of your house going up if you get a building permit and you want to add this space and do your own plumbing you can you're going to need you know your plumbing code pretty good because they're going to inspect the roughen as well as the finish my suggestion in that case to go with the Santa flow system then you don't have to open the floor you don't have to tie into old existing plumbing which might run you outside of your expertise and then it's pretty simple to follow the instructions and do all that according to code when it comes to electrical if you're comfortable doing your own electrical again pull an electrical permit they'll have an inspector come out make sure your roughen is done properly and then you can finish all of that off your as well outside of that you just need to know how to do drywall maybe a couple of interior walls hang a door and then put down your flooring if you choose carpet and you don't know how to do carpet I'm telling you right now you're gonna have no success with that this is not a do-it-yourself product I've tried it a couple of times and failed miserable I don't suggest it for anybody but if you want to go with laminate or vinyl those are just basically measure and cut and anybody can do that themselves so that will keep your costs really low and you might actually even be able to make a few bucks on your basement thanks for joining us in this version of reality renovation our basement edition if you're new to the channel and you haven't seen us before then by all means subscribe to the channel don't forget to check the links for other reality Rena vision videos and if you have questions which I'm sure you do put them in the comment section below I will answer them myself I promise well thanks for joining us today and if you'd like to see the projects that we're doing in the future hit the subscribe button so you notified every time we have a new video or check out the link over here and you can check out some of our past projects while you're making that decision I gotta find a new color

Channel: REALITY RENOVISION

Views: 308,720

Rating: 4.894299 out of 5

Keywords: basement renovation, basement renovations, home renovision, renovision, jeff thorman, renovate a basement, reality renovision, construction basement, basement construction, how to finish a basement, closing a basement, basement drywall, basement flooring, basement floor, basement waterproof flooring, best flooring for a basement, cheap renovations, cost effective renovations, diy basement renovation, home renovision diy, home renovsiion

Id: RiFkYdO33YU

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019