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lkplatow

Please vote on a basement floor plan - I need help!

lkplatow
14 years ago

We are about to start finishing our basement - in fact, the contractor is scheduled to start next week. And we still haven't made up our minds completely about the floor plan. I totally stink at visualizing stuff in my head, and am hoping that you guys can help me figure out which version is best.

Our basement is kind of small and goofily laid out, so our options are limited (it's not going to be one of those palatial basements you see on Bang for Your Buck or anything!). We basically want to finish 2 rooms, a large multi-purpose playroom/kids computer room/media room and a smaller home office for my husband, who works from home. We are also planning for an unfinished workshop area and an unfinished area to be used for exercise equipment and storage.

Because of a lot of goofy stuff (support posts, radon pipes, utility areas, low ceiling height, floor drains) we are limited in what we can do, so we have pretty much finalized the placement of everything except the "media center" area. Like I said above, I really stink at visualizing furniture placement without actually having the walls and furniture in front of me, so I need opinions.

My sister, who is an architect, has kindly drawn up 8 zillion different versions of floorplans for me, but I still can't decide what would work best. I'm going to post my top 3 and hopefully, you can help me decide between them.

Basically, we are down to two options - having the media center recessed into part of a long wall or cutting it diagonally across the corner of the room. Caddy corner seems best because you'll see the TV better from the whole rest of the room, but on the other hand, it seems to cut a lot of floor space out of the room. Recessing it gives us a longer wall to work with (we can put some shelving up next to the TV and get a nice built-in look) but I'm concerned it will make the room look unbalanced because of all that weight on one side, plus you won't be able to see the TV from part of the room. To add complication to the mix, we need a door to the workshop area somewhere on the wall near the media center - I'm not sure where the best placement of that door is. We'd like to have as straight a shot from the bilco doors as possible for ease of moving big things like sofas in and out, but that won't be possible at all if we recess the media area.

Since this probably isn't making much sense without visuals, here's the floor plans. To give you a sense of scale, the entire basement measures about 50 x 22. The area we plan to finish (the main room) is about 22 x 22.

Plan 1:


This is the "recessed" media center version. The whole rectangular area across from the sofa would be a built-in media area, with the TV in the center and shelves to the sides, below, and above it. The door to the workshop gets moved up to the other side of the support pole, meaning there is no straight shot in from the bilco doors (all the way to the left). Along the top wall are a cabinet for the dehumidifier and a long wall of sliding closet doors - this is for toy storage (the play area will be along the top of these plans, in front of the sliding closets). Note that you won't really be able to see the TV from the area in the top left of the finished room (in front of the dehumidifier cabinet).

Plan 2:


Here is the caddy corner media center. We would put the TV on the diagonal wall with shelves above and below it, but no shelves to the side. In this version, we still don't get the straight shot in from the bilcos with the door to the workshop, but the TV is visible from every part of the finished room. I'm a little worried by how the pole hits the back of the sofa, and I'm also concerned that the chairs are way too close to the TV. There's not a lot of floor space in the media area here (I'm picturing lots of teenagers hanging out and flopping on the floor.)

Plan 3:


This is the plan I think I like best. We get the door to the workshop area more in line with the bilcos and the chairs are farther back from the TV. But I am concerned that this layout will look goofy in real life (because of how the chairs are kind of pushed back almost in line with the sofa) and that some of the walking paths are a little squishy (between the right chair and the shelves/desk it starts looking a bit pinched, no?) Plus the door is so close to the media center that again, I wonder if we're putting all the weight on one side of the room and it's going to look unbalanced (though hopefully the cabinet and closets along the back wall will help balance the other side.

Anyhow, between these 3 plans, which would you choose? We don't have any of the furniture yet, so we could tweak the sizes/layout of the furniture to whatever would work best. We're pretty set on everything else (the shelves/desk and sliding closet placement) but I'm open to suggestions if anyone has a stroke of genius idea about how we could lay the entire space out better.

Incidentally, though the plans show a game table, right now we'll just have toys (in fact, replace the game table with a train table and you've got the right picture!) The game table is for when the kids get bigger - we figure we'll put air hockey or something similar back there and maybe a pub table with barstools.

Thanks so much for any help you can offer!

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