We have five finished rooms and a bathroom in our basement. Once you're downstairs, you'd never know you're in a basement. Typical basement windows, but we have doors, good ceiling lighting and lamps that work with wall switches and electric wall heaters that are thermostatically controlled in each room.

Three of the rooms and the bath have wallboard, the laundry room and bedroom have paneling that we painted. That's because those are the rooms that we are most likely to have to get behind the walls for wiring, the sump pump, circuit breakers, etc.

Our stairs go down the center of the house into the family room, laundry room on one far end, library/office next to it, junk/work room on that end. Family room, bedroom and bath on the other side of the stairs. It's a cozy apartment/guest room.

We have ceramic tile on the floors, with area rugs in the living areas. I'm very glad we don't have carpet. The sump pump got stuck once and would have ruined carpeting. It was easy to roll up the rugs, squeegee the ceramic, and put everything back again.

IMO, good lighting is key to making basements not look like basements.

Do you have an automatic water shut off in case the hot water tank decides to leak?

Our sump pump has stuck once and flooded the basement so we ripped up the carpet and installed ceramic and then put down area rugs. Where were you sherrmann 26 years ago when we first put down the rug? LOL

We have an "almost" finished basement....Walls, floors, done, but no permanent ceiling yet. We ended up with sheet vinyl with area rugs, because the guy that did the floor said tile would end up cracking because our house was new and still settling. It is not my favorite choice, but back then I didn't think I could have anything else. Are the new floating wood floors an option, or are you worried about flooding, etc. For the room that houses the mechanicals, I added a huge section for storage, and boy am I glad I did that. Even though we have not yet finished the ceiling, our town has taxed our basement as finished living space.

I think your flooring guy was right, deedee. My house was built in 1967, so the settling cracks occurred in the concrete, not the ceramic. They were HUGE, too. That said, the house did settle again about two years ago, causing the doors on the back of the house upstairs to go cockeyed. Didn't affect the basement floors, though.

It's not just because of flooding that I don't want carpeting downstairs. Sewers back up, cracks develop in the foundation that allow rainwater and snow melt to seep in, sump pumps fail. The list goes on. I think vinyl flooring is an excellent choice in a basement. There are some very beautiful ones available.

We have carpet on top of old vinyl tiles (they are really ugly), and we just decided to replace the carpet. Any other option would be more trouble and expense.

Our house was built in 1950. What I wish had been done differently was that better use had been made of the space to take advantage of natural light. The best light down there is in the garage. The worst is in the finished living space. Even the utility room has a better window than the main room, but it's right next to the furnace and over the hot water heater, so not much we can do about it. My guess is the original owners wanted a big room with a fireplace and didn't care about ventilation or natural light.

We even have a full bath down there (toilet, sink, and shower), but it's placed in the far corner of the utility room and you have to walk past the furnace to get to it. We can't decide if it's worth spending money on it to fix it up. Again, I think this setup was designed so that the man of the house, who owned a gas station, could drive his car into the garage, step out of the car and into the basement, and walk and straight into the laundry room, where he could throw his greasy clothes into the washing machine and take a shower.

We did finish off the back part of the garage a few years ago. I use it as a music studio. It's almost at ground level (house is built into a slope) and has wonderful light, with windows facing south and west.

Wow, that's way more than you wanted to know. Hope it's somehow helpful.

Keep one area for storage. That's my best tip as I have nearly a thousand square feet for storage and don't regret any of it.
I can have as many Christmas trees as I want.

Well...I owned/ran a construction company for nearly 15 years and we did...70 or so basements. I can certainly give you my.....very biased...opinion about insulation, drywall, etc., etc., etc.

Layout? That's your problem. :-)

We have a finished basement with a non conforming bedroom that we turned into the guest bedroom. There's also a bathroom, storage room, office, and laundry area. It's nice because our guests have their own private level when they come to stay.

Thanks for the info guys!

Mcmann - I don't know actually. I'll look into that! Thanks.

Deedee - How new was your house when you finished the basement? Ours is only a year and a half old.

Good idea about the vinyl or tile. It would make the most sense.

Jason - I see I did say layout. . . any other advise about anything else I'm all ears also.

The rooms we were most likely going to be making will be a gym taking up the largest portion of the basement, DH's man room, a play room for future kids and office It probably would be nice to have a small bathroom down there also. Plus that section with the freezer etc.

Shee: Our house was 2yrs old when we put in the walls and flooring. Not to be repetitive, but DON'T forget to sneak some storage into your layout. You'll never regret it (says this shopper).

Sheeshare...we did every type of insulated wall you can imagine; studs and fiberglass (NEVER again), foam and wood framing, foam and studs, etc.

The best product is made by Gold Industries; it's a 2" foam panel (4 x 8'), that has aluminum studs built in. You put it on the wall, screw through the studs to attach it to the wall, then simply screw the drywall to the studs. It's the fastest, easiest, most energy effecient system there is. Even if your basement floods; the drywall is the only damage; the insulation and all the metal framing is fine.

Go for it.