After all of the business of the holidays we had a chance to work on the house some. My place of work was shut down over the span between Christmas and New-Years, so I had the most opportunity to work on the house. the last time you were updated, we were doing the tidbits of final touches upstairs. Since then we have jumped to the basement; there are a few big projects awaiting us (cutting 25' of sewer line from out of the floor) but we decided that we want to at least make some livable space in the basement.
You need to know some things before you begin to finish a basement because they will effect how it is done.
What kind of walls do you have?
What you are wanting to use it for?
How often you will be down there?
Do you want it to be warm or not?
Does your basement tend to flood?
We are planning on using our basement for entertainment and for a place to be away from upstairs and part of that room we want to convert into a small bedroom/ or office.
First before anything, you want to seal your walls, really almost regardless of if you have had water in your basement in the past or not this will prevent water from at least coming through the walls. There are many options out there for sealers but you should know your needs and not just buy one.
The brand that we ended up getting was called Watertite; we also looked at drylock, but the warranty on it was the difference b/t 10 years and lifetime. Another thing to consider is the amount of water that can be and needs to be held back. the WaterTite had a rating of 34 PSI (which means that it can have 34 pounds of pressure per square inch on the wall from water and not leak) and Drylock had a rating of 10 PSI; usually car tires are filled at 30-40 PSI, so that gives you a good idea of how much force it can hold. It wasn't cheap however; close to 30 dollars a gallon, and covered an area of about 8 x 20 feet after 2-3 coats. Making sure that the grout lines (stuff in/bt blocks) were covered the best. so depending on the dampness of your basement walls will determine what you are after for sealer.
Here is a good article that walks you through more specifics: Waterproof-Your-Basement
Once we had the walls sealed, we were able to start laying out stud walls and how we wanted our basement to work.
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