Appreciate the responses, this site is always so helpful in generating ideas. cabinbuilder -- a corner fireplace would be nice, but I don't think it will work here. The long outside wall will be taken up with two large windows and a frenchdoor to take advantage of natural light -- which doesn't leave a lot of wall space remaining. We're also trying to tap into existing gas pipes/vents which only gives us the 2 end walls. But will noodle it around... Love the idea of cabinets near the game room. beaglesdoitbetter -- What beautiful rooms -- we have a similar fireplace to the first in our great room with a black granite surround. So hubby wants to do something quite different in the basement. LOVE the fireplace in your bedroom -- it's so unique. caminnc -- I did also think of candice olsen -- she does a lot of beautiful basements -- I will check out her stuff fnmroberts -- I'm going to try to get to the fireplace shop near us for some ideas -- good thought. I need to have tile for mudroom, paint and carpet choices by Monday so scrambling to try to get the full picture. Afraid if I delay the contactors at all, I may not see them again for a month. Good for you to do your basement yourself -- you do beautiful work. I will ask about sound insulation for utility area -- I hadn't thought about that. I made the mistake of telling my husband he could do whatever he wanted in the basement -- now having a hard time keeping my word on that. We usually have different visions but can come together in the end. People complain that their husbands don't have any opinion on decorating -- mine definitely does. Luckily he has good taste!

I can relate. We ended up turning over a basement family room to my oldest for a bedroom and hanging out spot for all of the guys. Frankly, I just kept a path cleared to the laundry room and kept the door closed. He's lucky I didn't kill him when he moved out. In regards to the dishes, I just let him know that if I picked up dishes, I'd throw away anything I wanted, so the boys all made a point of getting that stuff back upstairs. He moved back home for a couple of years and is clearing out again this week. I let him know this time that if he left any mess for the rest of us to clean, I'd be taking the money for my services out of his account (which I'm on.) Really, it was a good trade-off. The room was a mess, but since it was the lowest level I didn't have to look at it except for a few minutes a day. Ours was a walkout basement, so the boys didn't even have to bother us to come and go. Knowing where a dozen 19 year old boys were at midnight on a Friday night was worth the aggrivation. I'd focus on getting your work space more comfortable. Gloria

Hi Mary Lu and Julie and thanks for your ideas. Unfortunately, we are going to have to move the TV to the right hand wall. I found out today that it will cost us twice as much to do surround sound if we have the TV against the stair wall as speakers in the ceiling are much more than speakers in the wall. Also, the light from the two windows at the bottom of the page will cast light on the plasma screen making it very hard to watch TV during the day unless we cover up the windows with dark blinds. I do not want to cover up the light as I think basements are dark enough anyway. Sooooooo, it looks like the TV is moving. I did post a second draft of the layout of entire basement including the games room, mudroom and basement powder room on the building a house forum. I have not added the round table yet, but I do like that idea. However, I also like the idea of the counter height snack bar. If the round table does not go in the games room, there is room for it on the main level as we need one good area to play cards, board games etc. I welcome any more comments! Carol

Thanks for all the input so far. Suero - I didn't understand what you were asking about the entrance being in the office, then I looked at the plans again and I totally see where you are coming from. You can't actually tell from the plans, but the entrance is actually at the bottom of the plans - the stairs go down towards the bottom wall, so that at the bottom of the stairs, you see the TV area to your right and the door to the exercise area to your left. The door under the stairs is a closet in the office where my hubby wants to put the router, printer, fax machine, etc. There are only two small windows - one is behind the furnace (go figure) and the other is in part of the basement that is a crawl space (everything above the "top wall" on the plans is only dug out to half-height, so the floor in that area is about waist high if you are standing in the full-height part of the basement. The round thing in the workshop is the water heater - it's actually not there yet (it's under the stairs) but we're moving it to getit out of the middle of our finished area. There's also a central vac along that wall. The big X in the workshop is an area of indented floor with a floor drain -- the PO's of the house used the area to wash their dogs. Also, above that area the ceiling is crazy low -- the upstairs has sort of a sunken foyer so the ceiling there is probably only about 6'6" or so. We have shelves along the left wall that hold all our paint and are using the floor drain to drain the dehumidifier. The workshop area also holds the electrical panel/breaker box. It's really not a suitable area to finish because of the multi-level floor/low ceiling and all the stuff (w/h, central vac, breaker box). Oh, also, the "top wall" in the workshop is an opening to the half-height area that we plan to leave open. This is really hard to explain - perhaps a pic will help (excuse the mess - we've purged a lot of stuff out of the basement since these were taken): To address some of the other concerns you all brought up, I don't expect that hubby will be using loud saws or whatever while someone else is watching TV (for one thing, the tv is primarily for him, LOL!) The workshop is pretty small (the whole darned basement is cramped, to be honest). I mainly just wanted an area where I could do projects - strip a piece of furniture, use the miter saw for a quick cut or two, etc. And somewhere to store my massive collection of paint cans, LOL! Also, as far as finishing the exercise room, the original plan was to have 3 rooms, one being a dedicated exercise room. But when we got down there with our painters tape and marked it out on the floor, the exercise room ended up being so cramped that it felt claustrophobic. And we don't want to finish that whole "unfinished area" because we still have the furnaces and a whole bunch of well stuff (water softener, a few tanks, etc.). So we figured we'd just omit the wall and leave the exercise area as part of a bigger unfinished room. The shelves/desk along the stairs are for my kids - I envision a long countertop with two kneehole openings to serve as "desks" for the kids. I do plan to use the area under the stairs -- part of it will be a closet accessible from the office and the lower part will be accessible from the exercise area for storage of random stuff. And again, the sliding closets along the top are there in part to incorporate the half-height area. Here's a pic to show you what I am dealing with: I want the closets to be about 2 feet deep at the bottom but where the openings to the half-height area are, the shelves will be deeper, going all the way to the back of the columns that support the ceiling there. We should get a lot of toy storage out of this plan, and I want to build the back of one closet such that it will have an access panel to get back to the half-height area (though we'll have an opening in the workshop area, there are some low hanging pipes and beams back there that would make getting something bigger than a box into the other side of the area very hard, so we want a big access panel to get to the other side if we ever need to (our oil tanks are back there, and someday they may need to be replaced.) So because we want to take advantage of the half-height areas and allow for access back there, those closets taking up the whole top wall seem the only way to do it that I can think of. I did enterain the idea of putting the TV built-in into one of the openings, but ruled it out a while ago when my sister pointed out that putting the media stuff along the "top wall" and the toy storage area at the "bottom wall" means that the first thing people see when they walk down the stairs is a whole pile of toy mess. At least flipped so that the TV is along the "bottom" side, the toy mess is tucked up behind the seating area and not the first thing visitors see! Please do keep the opinions coming - you are all giving me a lot to think about and I'd much rather second-guess things now than after it's built!