You have a good working plan. It appears that you have about 900 sq. ft. How high will the ceiling be? Have you considered insulation, lighting/electrical, HVAC, noise control for the floor above and possibly refrigeration or cooking (presuming that is a bar behind the sofa)?

From what I can determine the room sizes appear adequate. I often suggest placing masking tape on the floor to get a feel for individual areas before beginning the build.

I would suggest a double wall around the furnace to contain the noise. A cold air return for sure and possibly heat ducts and/or an auxulary heating source. I'm personally not a proponent of wood or carpeting on basement floors because water heaters eventually leak and sump pumps fail. So, have a pan installed below the water heater and an emergency back-up sump pump. Also, anticipate a need for a dehumidifier for humid months.

The link to ours includes our layout. Many photos have info about them below the picture to possibly offer ideas. Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Basement Photos

Thanks for your tips, fnmroberts. I looked at your plan and photos of your beautiful basement-nice job! I hope ours will turn out half as good!
We have a gas boiler-hot water pipes for heat. There is a hot water baseboard running on one perimeter wall. We hope to extend it all around. Do you or anybody else know if it can be converted to a convector kind of system?-that's what we have on our first floor. Then we can still use majority of the perimeter wall for closets and shelves and not worry about baseboard under the closets. Or are there more modern options?
As for ceiling, we have about 7.5 feet in height. I am looking for non-commercial looking ceiling tiles as DH wants to retain access to the pipes etc. I am still debating whether we should drywall the area on the other side of the bar-there is a steel beam running across the entire space.
We want to do a floating floor installation as there is no water coming in from the basement walls but it still smells musty. We are thinking of using laminate for the majority of the floor-hopefully we will not lose too much height with it. Any other options that will work better for height?
Thanks for your input-would love to hear additional feedback.
vinudev

The bathroom layout needs work. First the door should swing into the room, so move it to the left. Then you sink should be where your shower is. The shower should go where the toilet is now, and the toilet should be moved to the sink location and rotated 90 degrees so that the tank is against the right wall. Anyway you look at it, the toilet needs to be rotated so you don't have to shimmy in front of the sink to sit down on it.
Also, flip the door to the walk-in closet horizontally so that it opens up against the wall.

Thanks, betaiota. I had not realized the door swing issue in the bathroom. I agree that the toilet should be rotated 90deg to have clearance from the sink. I am not so sure on moving the locations of the shower and sink. If I put the shower and toilet on the same side won't it get too crowded? I also figured that sink should be nearest the door-so you don't have to cross the room(not that its that big!) to wash your hands.
good point about the walk in closet door swing. Thanks.

You might check your local codes, the bathroom door might HAVE to swing out. Perhaps you could use a pocket door?

The walk-in closet has an interesting el that is destined to become a clutter-corner. From experience, despite any shelving or hanging storage you install, stuff will go in that el and never be seen till you move house. If you make the closet a simple rectangle, you'll have more floor space in the rec room and a tidier closet.

Love the sink between the stairs and workroom. Great idea!

Hi Vinudev,

I'd switch workout room and the bathroom. That way, you can draw cables to the TV area and maybe another TV in your workout room easily. Also, the bathroom being next to your furnace, might be better too.

This is a rough sketch of my basement (it's not to scale):

A 3D image:

We had to work around a few of the poles which weren't in a straight line and placed in random places.

We have a screen with projector. The chairs are facing away from the screen - couldn't change the software to show the right way.

The sump pump is on the corner near the screen. We installed a second sump pump and a battery backup before finishing the basement.

The electrical and water/sewage outlets are in the exercise room. It also has a TV. The wet bar has a sink and an island with overhang for folks to sit around.

When we have a big party, we move the chairs to the side and we have the entire section to dance/entertain.

We have a ping-pong table between the chairs and the utility room. The stairs is a U shaped stairs. We have a pantry under the stairs. There are two doors to the pantry - the one behind the stairs is a short one - only about 2.5 feet high. But we can store long things like a folding table there. The door near the bathroom opens into a 'L' shaped pantry with shelves. In the utility room we have shelving along the outer wall (the furnace, etc are close to the inner long wall and the pump for the toilet/shower ejector is near the inner short wall).

Hope that helps.

Vidya

bpathome, I am concerned about the L in the walk in closet too but hope to use heavy duty pullouts etc to store rarely used items like suitcases. The house has so little storage that we need every inch we can get.
Vidya, Your basement layout looks really nice! Can I ask how big a space do you have? I like that your playroom has a door! Our TV/entertainment area has to double up as a play area too and I am not looking forward to the mess!
We already have a half bath in the bathroom space-so we hope to reuse at least some of the plumbing. Thanks for your suggestion about the TV cables. Will keep it in mind.

Vinudev,

My basement area is about 1600 sq ft.

What is the long white thing behind the sofa? Is it a counter with a sink? And the things on the right wall? Is it a desk with two computers?

The corner to the right of the steps seem like a dead space. I'm not sure why you'd need the second sink when you have the bathroom close by - JMHO.

Also, do you want windows in the entertainment area? You might prefer it dark to view movies, etc and the windows would cause issues. Can you move the entertainment area to the area where the desk is currently?

I liked the OP's suggestion of refridgeration - it's very handy.

Here is a suggestion - again, not to scale and the door swings are not correct always - can't change it in my software.

Good luck.

Vidya

Thanks Vidya for the great mockup! Its nice of you to spend time on this for me. Its definitely a possibility to move the entertainment area to right in front of the stairs. The only problem is we have these columns right in the middle of the space. We were thinking of using the shelves around the TV for storage of DS's toys. The windows are these teeny tiny 18" ones up near the ceiling-most of the basement is below ground.
In our current plan, the counter behind the sofa holds a wet bar and also anchors two columns in the middle of the room. The other sink on the stair wall is part of our laundry area(I couldn't get the program I am using to put in a utility sink!). The area to the right of the stairs is meant to be used for a filing cabinet for the office. The work room will have to stay where it is right now as DH needs at least a 10'X10' space and there isn't that much space on the other side of the furnace.
Once again, thank you for the mockup. I am seriously considering swapping the office and entertainment area.

Vinudev,

Are you sure it's easy to put the wet bar in the middle of the area? How do you plan to eject the water to the sewage line? We too were considering putting the sink in an island near the steps, but when it came to figuring out sewage connection, we realized that it was better being near the wall where there already existed sewage lines from the first floor. You might be able to find a solution, but just a FYI about our decision process. Also, by putting in a counter there, you cannot be flexible about converting the room to be a long open space when needed. If you are ok with that, that's fine. We wanted to be flexible. So, all the fixed items are on the walls.

I hear you about the columns. We have many of them too - not even in a straight line. There's a column right next to the chairs, in the middle of that space. Can you do the same and anchor the columns with the sofa? We anchored the island between two columns. We incorporated 3 others in the inner wall of the utility/bathroom/playroom. We have 3 more columns which are just standing in the room. We covered them with the pole covers found in home depot and just stained it to match the cabinets.

Do you have your laundry down in the basement too? Are they under the stairs since you haven't shown them in your design? It makes sense to have the laundry sink near the washer - I love mine :)

If you need the space for the workroom where it is, maybe you can move the counter space to the top wall. For normal days you could probably use the countertop as a desk and during parties put the laptop/crafts in the cabinets and use the countertop for a buffett.

Good luck deciding. We went through so many iterations :) Every little thing seemed to change our previous decision. But in the end it was all worth it.

I hope I'm not coming across as pushy. I just want to help you if possible since we went through so many issues while designing ours.

Vidya

If you moved the door of the bathroom to the left wall, upper corner (rotating the various fixtures inside), you could actually consider making the wall that currently has the door one wall of a bar (with a sink on that wall), with an L shape extending straight from the bathroom wall (which currently has no door) facing the tv area. This would make the bar fixtures be placed where you already have plumbing fixtures and provide extra seating that feels a part of the tv area.

Are those stairs going to be open rails or walls? If walls, you could build a closet to the right of the stairs in that corner. In fact, you could extend the wall of the closet (straight towards the electrical room) and make a nicely sized walk in closet. One option could be full size along the stairs and then a narrow depth set of enclosed cabinets (sized with adjustable shelves deep enough to hold most totes) along the wall or a deeper closet extended out.

Then you could move the desks / childrens' play area to the corner where the walk in closet is currently located. You could actually bump out the wall of that current walk in closet to enclose a decent sized playroom for the kids or perhaps just do a half wall to break off the area, but still make it accessible and "part of" the tv room.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about anchoring those posts.

Just some thoughts... :)