Canada is a cold country during winter but also due to a continental climate has hot summers. This means that home owners will need to have extra space for storing central heating boilers and water heaters that need to be protected from the elements. Also living in cold climates requires that you have other facilities to hand such as space for clothes dryers and washing machines as you cannot dry clothes outside in winter. The basement therefore, which is in almost every home, is an ideal place to relocate these essential but obtrusive machines.
The basement though is commonly used as a place for storing old furniture or bicycles can be readily transformed into a working utility area for washing or storing food. By relocating washing machines and large chest food freezers out of the family living space down to the basement you can free up a lot of space. What’s more most houses will already have a basement suitable for converting to this task.
In order to convert your unfinished basement into a finished area requires that a strong and reliable vapor barrier is used to protect the basement from mold. This is an important area that cannot be neglected or taken lightly as mold will ruin all of your good work if it persists. You may want to line the bare foundation walls to enhance the appearance but that is more an aesthetic consideration.
What you will need is to install is electricity and plumbing and that should be done by a qualified electrical or plumbing engineer. Depending on the structure of the basement this might be harder than it first appears. This is because if the utilities have not already been installed you might need to break through the concrete floor of the house to run the cables and pipes. Again this is best left to the professionals.
Nonetheless, even though it might take some money and time, renovating your basement can make a huge difference to your living space. As it’s not just washing equipment and freezers you can relocate as the only limit is with your imagination. You could make the basement into an office or a home theatre or a gym. It could even depending on the size be converted into a self-contained apartment complete with kitchen and bathroom. In short there is no end to the things you could use your basement for. It doesn’t have to remain that musky place to store all your junk it can be transformed into valuable living space.
Also by renovating your basement it doesn’t just increase your living area it also will increase your properties value. For although basement floor coverage cannot be included in the houses overall square footage it can if it has been finished professionally be included in a separate statement. This creates extra value to your home for prospective buyers.
Your unfinished basement may be an underutilized but potentially valuable asset that is going unrealized.