Bare light bulbs hanging from low ceilings. Cheap indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor and dowdy wood paneling on the walls.
No wonder it used to be so scary to go down to the basement.
Lots of recessed lighting is a way to elegantly light up a dark basement room. In this remodel, the bookcases have also been lit. Today's new basements include plenty of both natural and artificial light.
(Courtesy Case Design/Remodeling)
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But not so much anymore. Basements are climbing out of the cellar and being transformed into well-lighted, high-ceilinged, often grand areas.
"Basements are bigger, better, taller, more expensive," said Jim Gibson, principal of Gibson Builders LLC, a D.C. custom-home builder. "Before, they were always considered secondary space. Now, people are making them a part of their house."
And they look like the rest of the house, too. "The basement kitchenette will have granite countertops; the appliances will be the same as upstairs; there's high-level carpeting and ceramic tile in the bathroom instead of cheap carpeting and linoleum; the lighting is warm and recessed or with sconces instead of the old fluorescent; there's audio speakers in the ceiling for the surround sound system," said Craig Durosko, partner in Sun Design Remodeling Specialists Inc. in Burke.
At a time when moving to a bigger house can be prohibitively expensive for many people, remodelers say homeowners are realizing that finishing or updating a basement is a low-cost way to gain a big chunk of living space.
"A basement renovation is about half the cost of an addition," said Mark Richardson, president of Case Design/Remodeling Inc. in Bethesda. "The cost of building out is substantially more than doing a renovation of what you already have. Basements allow you to get more livable square footage without taking up any more of your land. It's a real benefit."
Because basements usually run the entire length and width of a house, the extra space can be considerable.
"In some of our models with basements, the basement is about 3,000 square feet," said Dee Minich of K. Hovnanian Homes. "That's a house in itself."
Just because it's less expensive to update the basement than to add a new room doesn't mean people are doing it on the cheap. Wet bars and home theaters are almost standard these days in upper-end houses. Gibson has also made basketball courts, mini-tennis courts, wine-tasting rooms, wine cellars, safe rooms, barber shops and hairdressing salons, massage salons, gift-wrap rooms, and even a parking garage for 14 cars.
One client, a movie buff, added a $150,000 home theater that seated 10 people in reclining theater seats.
"You don't even call them basements anymore," Gibson said. "Now, they're just lower levels."
Kathleen and Jim Kee, who recently remodeled their basement in Springfield, admit they were looking for "something elaborate" when they designed the project.
"We were thinking that if our two sons come back to live with us after college, they could stay down there and have their privacy and we could have our privacy upstairs," Kathleen Kee said.
