A Quick Guide To Finishing A Basement
A Quick Guide to Finishing a Basement
Are you looking for a guide to finishing a basement? This can be a task that you hire out to someone else to do or you do it yourself. Much of this you can do on a decent budget. There are many ways you can do it yourself, so here is a small guide to finishing a basement.
Obviously, when you start you need to decide how you intend to use the room. The whole idea is to uplift the room from the storehouse of junk to something that is appealing to the eye and useful to the home. In other words, this is about home improvement!
Many D.I.Y. enthusiasts say that this requires you to look at the basement like any other room, except that it has an exterior wall of concrete. Some suggest using treated 2x4's for the walls, which is important because when wood is exposed to concrete it can rot quite easily. The Internet has many a guide in this which you should take a look at for further information.
It's also good to remember that basements are usually not insulated too well and can flood easily, obviously depending on your area and also your plumbing. For this reason, you should probably avoid wooden flooring unless you are going to insulate the room well. Obviously, wooden flooring is more expensive and if you're on a lower budget it is not worth much of a consideration.
Carpeting is advantageous, but basements get a lack of air flow and can have a lot of moisture, which means that you could get some mildew forming on the carpet.
One of the best choices to use for the flooring is vinyl sheets. You can also look at using oil-based concrete paint and put rugs over the room, but make sure the rugs avoid the corners where the mildew often appears. For concrete floors, there are also some great methods such as acid-etching which creates a great rustic look to the floor.
Tiling is obviously an option as well for the floor, especially if you want to lighten the room up a bit through using some light tiles. Terracotta tiles, which are quite easy to maintain and look great, are definitely worth a consideration.
Fixing moisture problems
One way in which you can fix moisture problems, to prevent further cost down the line and to create more improvement for the home, is to acid-wash the walls with a 50/50 mix of muriatic acid and water. Rinse the walls and make sure they are dry, then apply a decent oil-based basement paint. Gluing polyethylene plastic to the walls can also help a great deal.
No matter what you choose to do in terms of flooring and the walls of your basement, it's usually a good idea not to take short cuts when it comes to removing any moisture problems. Even if it means a higher cost, the fact of the matter is that if you remove the moisture issues you will ensure that everything you do to the basement will last and that the room will be great to live in.
As mentioned above, there are many places on the Internet that have a much more in-depth guide to finishing a basement. This article serves as an introduction only.
