Basement Reno

Back in 2014, several years ago I grandly decided it was the "year of the basement". I was going to get my stuff out of the basement and really fix it up. Well, here I am, having made minimal progress - mostly having gotten rid of books. The basement was lined with ikea bookshelves, and the accumulation of a lifetime as a reader before kindles. I was ruthless getting rid of them, and they went to the large local library bookstore. I personally delivered about a dozen bags over three years, and there are another dozen now ready to go.  I also went through many boxes of papers - some dating to college days - and purged extensively. Did you know that bank statements used to come on paper, showing your social security number?

Big room with stuff jammed in the end

More stuff in the larger bedroom

I was able to get six interior doors (removed from the main floor and for unknown reasons stashed down there) hauled off to the dump by my brother-in-law. Progress!

The little bedroom, gutted

But I realized I'm just not going to do this all. I have little appetite for spending time down in the basement, and even less for toting things out, and taking them to the dump or to be donated. Another big barrier was figuring out what could be donated where, and I hate to throw away perfectly good things. So, I've hired a project manager. So far, I've hired him for "Phase 1" - getting stuff out of the basement and then gutting it. He's made arrangements with a de-cluttering firm, and a contractor, and things are happening!

The first bit of progress goes really fast!  We can start to see what we are dealing with.

The plan is to create one or two legal bedrooms down there by creating an egress - basically, a big window with a ladder in the window well. This is truly a basement - the window in the pictures are in sunken window wells, below ground level. But there is already a full bath down there, so I'm going to fix up the whole place, including doing the bathroom nicely. This will enhance the value of my little 2-bedroom house, whenever I decide to sell. And, if I stay, I could have a very nice guest / room-mate suite. Because it will not be a separate entrance, and there will not be a kitchen, this is no AirBnB candidate. But I see constant postings in various places for young people who have unpaid or lowpaid short term internships looking for places to stay, and I could see me doing that. Something slightly less than total strangers coming into my house.

This window will get bigger and have a ladder

But there is a very long road to go down to get there. My current plan is to gut the place, (or more correctly have the place gutted as I don't intend to do the work) inspect the walls and foundations for settling or water damage, and then figure out what's next.