Admit it. When you turn the light off to the basement, you get the heck out of there, don’t you?

There is just something creepy and icky about old exposed floor beams, scraggly insulation, unfinished cement walls and floors. That is, if you’re even lucky enough to have cement. A lot of the older homes have river stone walls and bricks for floors. I always wonder if there is going to be a spider or some other creepy crawly dropping on my hair in those sorts of spaces. (Insert shuddering here.)

We recently rented a cottage for a week with a walk-out basement that went to the beach. Somehow, between the cramped stairs to the basement combined with the unfinished state, all of us would walk out on the deck to get down to the beach. Ok, I understand that they store things like the canoe and lifejackets down there, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to remain unfinished! We would scurry with hunched shoulders from the exterior door to the lower level bathroom despite the two foot of clearance to the joists above us. Once in the finished bathroom with the door closed, I felt a sense of relief and comfort.

Can you imagine a bright and clean functional workspace you could create if your washer and dryer are in the basement? Ahhh… no more stuffing your clean laundry into the basket in order to launch yourself upstairs where you can fold them in comfort. Storage spaces can still be utilitarian for those areas where you just need to dump seldom used items, but a finished space with shelves and/or cupboards will help keep you organized and prevent your floor from becoming a mess of a dumping ground.

One last thought on a possible way to use your basement: the Man Cave (also known as the home theatre and place to hide away the electronic gaming systems).

Stop scurrying away with the heebie-jeebies from what can be a valuable addition to your home. Finishing a basement means more than just getting rid of that annoying damp smell. It increases the value of your home, increases the amount of usable living space and decreases your heating/cooling bills.

Finished basement