Lanx
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Home Improvement
- Thread starter Picasso3
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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Brahma
Obi-Bro Kenobi-X
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is that door outside to a storm door?
No. But the door is about 8 inches off the ground.
Hateyou
Not Great, Not Terrible
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My last house we sold way above what we bought it for. 33%+ over 8 years. We did countertops and backsplash in the kitchen, stainless appliances, trimmed windows, chair rail, replaced bottom floor with cheap engineered hardwood, built a pergola from scratch. Probably $10k in upgrades we did ourselves.
Anyways after we sold the house I kept in contact with the buyer. He said what finally sold his wife on it was some bookshelves I made for my kids room. He said after she saw those she said they had to get it and the one condition she had was the shelves had to stay installed.
These seriously cost me like $50 in stain, spray paint, pipes, and scrap wood and this is what sold her.
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Brahma
Obi-Bro Kenobi-X
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So in short, you never know what can please a potential buyer. Or make them sold on the house.
Hateyou
Not Great, Not Terrible
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Pretty much. Some things will be universal though, all those upgrades i mentioned did nothing but add value. If you can do it yourself you come out ahead. All the stuff I mentioned was easy, except the floor. It was physically awful, but not difficult.
The back yard is what sold him, in ground pool, pergola, full and old growth landscaping.
I do miss the backyard in the summer. Sitting at the pool after work every day was relaxing. I don’t miss the work and bills from it, and not having a yard for 9 months a year when it was closed.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I get that, but I can't quite picture what I see in that picture becoming a nice part of the house. I don't think I'd put money into it but maybe I lack imagination.
Hateyou
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And to be more on topic for your situation. I don’t think you can do anything to that basement to make it an actual selling point. I’d clean the hell out of it and repaint the walls. Put down some cheap linoleum and floor trim. Replace those death stairs with real ones. Put up some cheap shelving units or cabinets and turn it into a storage / freezer area. Maybe a cheap card table if that’s something you do with a friend or two. If it’s functional it will help in that the buyer can see some utility out of it as opposed to a shithole mildew farm they do not want to deal with.
Focus your improvements in the living space upstairs instead.
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Oblio
Utah
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That is exactly why my suggestions are for the typical market participant. The more specific you get the more niche your design is the smaller your buyer pool becomes. Adding bedrooms and bathroom are always going to add value. My suggestion is if you are dead set on a game room, make it so it can easily convert to your typical rec room and at least have a 1/2 Bath so if you are hanging out playing games down their people do not have to go up stairs to take a leak. Ideally you would add 2 bedrooms with a full or 3/4 bath and a rec room. Not sure of your sq.ft. so perhaps only a 1 bed 3/4 bath and a rec room. Also, a bedroom can become an art/hobby room and/or office
if you want to play around with some design ideas I recommend Room Sketcher. It will allow you to draw your area add walls furniture fixtures etc. Depending on which version you buy you can even do a 3D rendering so you can virtually walk around in your proposed layout. Here are my up coming basement plans...
We are dividing up a large rec room to make two bedrooms and adding two large walk-in storage closets, this house desperately needs more storage. I did not bother drawing the mud room because nothing is being done to it, it houses our mechanical, laundry, my keezer, my sauna and is the back up pantry all while being the place the kids take off snow clothes or drop off their dirty river clothes in the summer months.
Here is one with a furniture mockup to make sure everything fits. That table you see in the rec room is actually going to be a foldable poker table that will be used for poker nights with some buddies of mine, but more often as the family game room.
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Lanx
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is the tree blocking a door?Turning it into something like this would be good for house showingsBrahma . Minus the drywall and ceiling.
View attachment 388363
Oblio
Utah
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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Dandai
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I'm going out on a limb and assume the air handler/ducting is in the crawlspace and the cost to finish that space isn't worth it for space that can't be used for anything else.
Lanx
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Dandai
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My water heater and air handler was in my crawlspace in my last house in NC. The house was built on a sloped grade so the front of the house had about 3 ft of crawlspace while the back of the house was tall enough that I was able to comfortably walk around. It wasn’t tall enough to do a basement but I sealed it with closed cell foam and framed and put up plywood walls in a 12x8 section at the entrance.
Oblio
Utah
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Many reasons there could be a be a partial basement with a crawl space...
It could be under a first floor addition. It could be built on a hill with a daylight partial basement. It could house some mechanical. Little to broad of a question to give an exact answer. Show me photos of the basement and the exterior of the home for reference and I could guess with much higher accuracy.
Lanx
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oh yea additions, my last house had a (i'm guessing) deck converted into an enclosed sunroom, and the bottom was just gravel and tarp (basically the deck) it was always freezing in the winter and when i went underneath it was just bats loosely sealed with plywood, that coulda used a partial crawlspace to regulate temps more.
but the sunroom looked really nice and i'd consider it a good addition for value and usable sq/ft
would a crawl space have been better? as far as i know, it's the only house on the block w/ an addition (you can see the house further down has the same sized deck)