One of the areas that will need attention if you want it to work properly is your venting from the dryer. Basements seem to have high walls and kinks and long runs to exhaust the dryer. Most of todays dryers need almost direct out side discharge to work properly. Solid venting is the right way to go, not the white plastic flexible stuff. Every 90 degrees elbow, cuts your air flow down 15%. brenton

We need to get an idea of how we are going to finish our basement (which we are doing at the time of the build) so our plumber can rough it in. Can anyone help with a bathroom and bedroom layout for the area on the left side of the basement? I would like the bath to be accessible to from the living area. A three piece bath with tub/shower combo, toilet, and single vanity is preferable. I would like a walk in closet in the bedroom and need the window to be in the bedroom. It is a lot of space to work with and is overwhelming me! Any help would be appreciated! Nothing is set in stone. We just like the option of having two potential bedrooms and a bathroom down there (need a window for all bedrooms to be considered bedrooms). Some added notes: One window centered on 17 inch wall. Window is 108" wide by 60 inches tall. I just want to use the 17' x 30" for 1 bedroom and 1 bath. The playroom was going to be the other bedroom but I am not opposed to redesigning everything to make things work better. I attached the foundation plan if that helps more. We will be using the space in front of the stancion posts for unfinished storage space and mechanicals. The horizontal line across (along the stairs) is where the wall will be covering the stancion posts. The stairway will be open. The length of the basement area is 64' from the exterior wall of the house to the garage. Thank you!

"...So at this point, changing the beams to steel and reducing jack posts isn't possible. Not sure if this can be done when we hire a contractor at a later point. Can this be done after the fact? I would still like to see some layout thoughts if we had to work with what we have?..." Well, this is confusing. Why can't the changes be made before construction begins? That's the time it can be both most economical, and be based to facilitate whatever layout in the basement which works best for you. To make the changes to the jack posts after construction will be very expensive. Without knowing more, it seems to me you're faced with two scenarios: 1) Make the needed changes before construction begins; or 2) Forget about any reasonable and economical changes to the basement for human habitation purposes once construction begins and is complete. When complete, with jack posts every 7'-8" the basement is uninhabitable, other than for storage.

The post locations in the 1st drawing do not match the walls in the 2nd. The Office that includes a closet will probably be considered a bedroom (opportunity to be used as one regardless of what you say it's use is), which will require an emergency escape and rescue window. Other than that, I might try to bring the seating area over to where the "rec room" label is for more light and the tv wall put on the stair wall, also moving the bath back if it can. The desk cubicle/pony wall area not sure how successful that is taking up so much floor space. It is ok to have columns not hiding in walls, you just have to account for it in your functional footprint of the assigned space.