Decorating to Increase Visual Space

With the basement finishing project approaching quickly, I have been searching for ideas to make the basement seem bigger and taller. With three relatively small rooms (family room, bedroom, bathroom) and a short ceiling (6'9"), it would be nice if we could maximize the visual size of the space. Here are some ideas I have found:

1) Flatten the Ceiling - We will remove as many bulkheads as possible, and move the remaining bulkheads to the walls where possible. We will use pot lights throughout the basement, and probably hang the bathroom vanity lights on the wall on both sides of the mirror. We obviously will not install crown moulding. I have read differing opinions for the ceiling paint (i.e. matte versus glossy), so will probably just stick with matte there.

2) Light Colours - We will probably use light/bright colours throughout the basement.

3) Vertical Stripes - We really are not stripe people or wallpaper people, but I have seen some rooms with stripes that look pretty good. This might work for us, but I'm not totally sold that it would help with visual height of the ceiling.

Source: The Lennox

Source: Domino Mag

4) High Wainscoting - I would like to use wainscoting in the basement bathroom, so we may do tall (i.e. higher than chair rail) wainscotting as part of a white bathroom.

Source: Hampton Design via Rambling Renovators

5) Ensuite Bathroom - We had planned to make the bathroom accessible through the bedroom for space reasons, but we are now thinking of using this "ensuite" concept to add space to the rooms as well. By coordinating colours (same colour for walls?) and cabinetry (matching built-in bedroom wardrobes to bathroom vanity?), we hope to make the two rooms blend into one. I hope to even have a double-door entry into the bathroom, but space constraints may not allow this.

6) Add Height to Windows - Our basement windows are quite large, and we actually increased the height of two windows while replacing them. We might try to enhance this further with window treatments.

7) Tall Furniture - The built-in wardrobes in the bedroom will be floor-to-ceiling with narrow doors. We will also lean towards thin, tall furniture when looking for a media unit for the family room, dresser for the bedroom, etc.

Any other ideas? Any thoughts on what is truly effective in making a ceiling look taller (#1 goal) and space feel bigger (#2 goal)?

EnerGuide Rating

We received a new energy efficiency rating of 70 for our house. The rating was 49 prior to our recent improvements, and that number was given to us after we installed spray foam insulation to go from R0 to R20 on our first and second floor walls, so the original number for our house would have been even lower than that.

For perspective, here are the ratings provided online for various types of houses:

• New house built to building code standards: 65-72
• New house with some energy-efficiency improvements: 73-79
• Energy-efficient new house: 80-90
• House requiring little or no purchased energy: 91-100

We plan to make some more improvements to our home that should help with energy efficiency (i.e. vapour barrier and drywall in basement and sunroom, new front and side doors), so in the end our house should be somewhere in the mid-70s according to this scale (the target number for our style of house is 74).

Mudroom Inpiration

We plan to turn our sunroom into a mudroom some day, and I have been browsing for inspiration photos since Meredith sent me one last week. This photo is probably closest to what I have been imagining, with some tall cabinetry (with doors) to store brooms and other messy stuff, as well as a bench, hooks and cubbies to store cute little boots, coats and mittens.

Source: http://stephenjmurphyinc.com.

I love the dark stained bench seats and change in bench heights in this room. We will only have about 7' to work with (our sunroom is about 10' long, but the 3' door needs to open on one end), so we do not have this much space to work with.

Source: http://thegatheringplacedesign.blogspot.com

This space has a nice clean look, but I think we need more storage than this (i.e. cubbies above the hooks). I think it would be great if we could make it so that shoes/boots can just slide underneath the bench. We have hardwood floors though, so winter boots might be an issue (but they would be an issue for cubbies too, right?).

Source: http://blog.connorbuilding.com

V-groove panelling appears to be popular in mudrooms (see Chris K's current project for another example). I think the door is my favourite part of this room though.

Source: http://www.benchmarkcustominteriors.com

I saved this photo over two years ago and still like the look, but the dividers between the "lockers" would reduce the size of the space a bit, and the wood for the cubbies could be a bit thicker.

Source: http://integritycustom.blogspot.com

Sidenote: I love this last guy's work (wish he posted to his blog more); the bay window seat from this blog also served as inspiration for the back portion of Mackenzie's window seat (there is additional storage underneath the bench behind the cubbies).

Cost for New Drains and Basement Floor

I always find it interesting to learn how much renovations cost, so I thought I would share some information about the estimates/costs for the work in our basement. We got a ton of quotes for a variety of different work, so here is a quick overview of some of the quotes from the most expensive to the least. All prices are in Canadian dollars and include taxes if applicable. For reference, our basement is 600 square feet.

• $54,000 - A general contractor provided this quote for breaking up the floor, underpinning, replacing the drains (including new bathroom), installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor.
• $38,000 - A drain/concrete/underpinning specialist provided this quote for the same work described above. This contractor actually seemed much more knowledgeable and experienced with this type of work.
• $14,500 - A waterproofing company quoted this for breaking up the floor, installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor (i.e. no drain wnrk).
• $8,800 - A general contractor quoted this for replacing the drains, installing interior waterproofing, and pouring a new floor (i.e. we break up floor).
• $6,800 - A concrete guy quoted this for breaking up the concrete floor, removing the necessary depth of dirt, and pouring a new concrete floor (i.e. no drain work or internal waterproofing).
• $5,600 - Six months later, the same concrete guy provided this quote to just lay gravel and pour a new concrete floor, so apparently breaking up the floor and removing the dirt was only worth $1,200.
• $3,800 - Quote provided by general contractor from the third bullet for just laying gravel and pouring a new concrete floor. This means that $5,000 of his $8,800 price above was for the drains and internal waterproofing.
• $2,600 - Price to get the plumber to do all drain work (i.e. replace old drains, rough-in the basement bathroom).
• $1,400 - Price to get concrete finisher to pour a new concrete floor (i.e. we do gravel work).

So, how much did we spend? Well, we decided pretty quickly that underpinning was not an option for us, as we simply could not afford it and were not confident that the ROI was there for our house. We got multiple quotes because we really wanted to hire a contractor to do most of this work (i.e. tight timeline, busy schedule with work and baby, etc). However, the more quotes we got, the more I realized that I would feel better doing some of the work myself. Here is the breakdown of our costs (and very conservative estimates of my time):

• Breaking up and removing concrete floor: $300 for dumpster, 10 hours of labour
• Removing dirt: $300 for dumpster, 20 hours of labour
• Drains: $2,600 for plumber, 0 hours of labour
• Waterproofing: $250 for materials, 10 hours of labour
• Gravel: $460 for 8 yards, 6 hours of labour
• Concrete floor: $525 for concrete, $1400 for finishers, 0 hours of labour
• Total: $5,835, 46 hours of labour

Obviously, this is just to do the drains and the new basement floor -- there is a heck of a lot more to be done to finish the basement. Looking back, the $8,800 and $6,800 quotes seem reasonable, but still would have required some additional work by us or another contractor. Overall, I am happy with the decisions we made regarding the use of contractors.

Basement Phase 5: Framing and Insulation

The new concrete floor was poured on Saturday morning of the long weekend, so I rested for most of that day while the concrete dried. The concrete process went as you would expect: one guy using a wheelbarrow to transport concrete from the truck into the chute, and three guys in the basement distributing and leveling the concrete.

Prior to framing and insulating the basement, I had a number of other tasks that needed to be completed. This included removing some old plumbing/electrical from the laundry machines, running the plumbing stack to the future first floor washroom, and running the new duct for the dryer. The biggest task was installing three basement windows, as well as a window to replace the milk box beside the side door.

I then proceeded to frame the three exterior walls. This was not very difficult, but it was time-consuming because I had to work around ductwork and other obstacles. I then insulated those walls by installing two layers of R14 batt insulation; the first layer was placed horizontally behind the studs, and then the second layer was placed vertically inside the studs. Because of space constraints, the wall beside the stairs was only insulated with a single layer of R5 styrofoam insulation.

We have since hooked up the washer and dryer, so for now the basement is essentially a huge laundry room. We will probably take it slow for the next few weeks, and then start working towards finishing the basement.

Basement Phase 4: Weeping Tile and Gravel

We decided to waterproof the inside of the basement. The exterior of the house was already waterproofed on the back and side, but the front of the house was somewhat damp, so we decided it was better to be safe than sorry and just do the whole thing. With the basement floor removed and drains exposed, this only took an additional 8-10 hours and cost an additional $250. This involved digging a 12"x12" trench around the perimeter of the basement about 12" from the foundation, installing 4" weeping tile, backfilling with 3/4" gravel, and then covering the trench and foundation wall up to grade with waterproofing membrane. Sorry for the lack of photos.

After the waterproofing membrane was installed, we laid a 4" layer of 3/4" gravel throughout the basement as a base for the concrete. Most concrete contractors quoted a price to lay both the gravel and concrete, but we went with a concrete finisher that we paid to do just the concrete portion. We bought the materials ourselves (8 yards of gravel and 5 yards of concrete), laid the gravel ourselves, and paid him directly for the concrete labour. This saved us about $1700 off of the lowest quote we got for a contractor who would do it all -- a pretty good decision considering it took less than six hours to move the gravel into the basement and distribute it across the floor.

This photo shows the first four yards of gravel after pouring it in the window.

Buckets of gravel are actually kind of light after carrying buckets of dirt.

The following photos show the basement pretty much ready for new concrete. Meredith and Mackenzie went out of town for the long weekend, leaving me with three days to lay the new concrete floor (well ... watch contractors do that part), install five new windows, frame the exterior walls, and insulate the walls and headers.

Basement Phase 3: Concrete and Dirt Removal

Remember that big pile of concrete we had in our basement? Meredith and her niece helped me move it out of the basement and into a bin. I then broke up the rest of the floor and carried it out into the bin.

Our house has double brick walls, so the walls of the basement and first floor are two bricks wide. The footing consists of two rows of bricks, with the top row being four bricks wide and the bottom row being six bricks wide. After removing the concrete floor, we discovered that the footing was completely missing in one area. It appears that these bricks were removed when the drains under the front yard were replaced (not by us!), but luckily the area was small and it did not affect the overlying bricks at all. I fixed this little problem by pouring concrete to replace the bottom row of bricks, and replacing the missing bricks on the top row of the footing. Problem solved.


I do not have any photos of the most grueling part of the entire project. The concrete floor that we removed was 2" thick, and the new floor is 7" thick (4" of gravel, 3" of concrete), so we needed to remove about 8" of soil from the entire basement just to gain about 2" of ceiling height. This required digging the dirt into buckets, carrying the buckets up the stairs, and pouring the dirt into a dumpster. That does not sound like a big deal, but those buckets get heavy after a while (a good contractor would likely use a conveyor system), and we had to remove roughly 10 cubic yards of dirt from the basement. I was extremely exhausted after finishing about half of the basement, so my brother came down for a couple of days to help and we finally got it done.

Basement Phase 2: Appliances and Gas Lines

The next step in our basement project was to move the washer, dryer and water heater onto a slab of concrete around the furnace. These appliances would remain in these locations permanently (as part of a furnace and laundry room). Since we are living in the house during the basement renovation, finishing this area now would allow us to avoid going without these appliances for an extended period of time.

The first step was to install a 4'x12' concrete slab surrounding the furnace. I set up forms in the dirt at the expected height of the finished floor, filled with 4" of gravel, and then finished with 3" of concrete.

We decided to replace our old rental water heater with an owned gas water heater. Not only would the gas water heater be more efficient, it would provide us with a much more consistent supply of hot water (our old electric water heater took hours to heat the tank once drained of hot water). We went with a power vented water heater because a chimney guy told us that it would not be wise to disturb/remove the old liner from the oil furnace that is in the chimney flue. My buddy Ox installed the new water heater for us in its new place beside the furnace. The old water heater was removed from its old location (the middle of the basement) and returned to Direct Energy.

In addition to installing the water heater, Ox completely re-installed the gas lines in our house. This was done 1) to get the gas lines out from underneath the joists to avoid bulkheads, 2) to replace some couplings that were not up to code, and 3) to eliminate the need for flexible copper.

I then framed some studs (for strapping plumbing, installing electrical, hanging shelves, etc) on the other side of the concrete slab, and we moved the washer and dryer onto that space.

Basement Phase 1: Drain Replacement

The first step in finishing our basement was to replace the drains underneath the basement floor. We have not had any problems with the drains, but we figured it would be smart to replace them now and avoid a mess in the future. I broke up the concrete floor on the half of the basement that has the drains, and then dug down in the dirt to reveal the old drains. We quickly learned that the drain line from the house to the street (i.e. under the front lawn) had been replaced by the previous owner (bonus!) and that we had no signs of tree roots in the drains under the house (double bonus!).

We hired a plumber that I had worked with previously to replace the drain lines for us. I probably could have done this work myself, but we were in a crunch for time and I did not want to mess something up and realize this after it was covered with new concrete. He basically just replaced the old clay drains with PVC, as no major changes in layout/slope were required. He also roughed in the basement toilet and shower, as well as a stack at the back of the house that we will tie into for the future first floor washroom.

At this point, we just piled all of the concrete and pipes into a huge pile in the corner. Breaking up the concrete was no big deal because it was thin and mostly mortar. Removing the soil was much more difficult, as I dug it into buckets, carried it up the stairs, and piled it underneath our front porch (we had some grading issues under there that we wanted to solve).

Energy Audit Complete

Our follow-up energy audit was completed yesterday, which is a big relief. We worked hard during the last six weeks and managed to finish everything on our "to do" list. Sorry for not posting information as we worked, but it was an exhausting month and I just didn't have the energy to keep up with photos/posts when there was so much work to be done. I'll post a few summaries of the work over the next week.

Here is a rundown of the energy audit rebates we hope to get:

• Furnace and A/C unit - Completed 18 months ago.
• Improve attic insulation from R0 to R50 - We hired Tropical Insulation to do this for us.
• Insulate basement walls - Completed last weekend. We did R28 on most of the walls and R5 beside the stairs (space constraints), plus our house is a semi, so I'm not sure how much we'll get here, but hopefully at least 60% of the maximum rebate.
• Insulate basement headers - Completed last weekend to R28.
• Window replacements - Replaced three basement windows (one not installed yet, so we didn't get all four) and two first floor windows.
• Air seal improvements - Not sure if we'll get this, but hopefully the above improvements will help.

We will have to wait to find out our exact rebate, but it should be around $5000, which will pay for a good portion of the work we have done in the basement thus far. Our biggest mistake was not doing the initial energy audit before insulating our exterior walls, as this would have resulted in another $3000 in rebates.