Drywalling ceiling sucks. Walls aren't to bad if you have patience. Priority one is straight framing. Everything depends on it for a nice wall. Mudding and taping just takes time to get right. Watch some youtube videos. But it sucks, and is messy. Alberta Drywall Supply had the best prices when I was looking, and will deliver to your basement(huge bonus).
Electrical isn't all that difficult an area to save loads of money. Most of it is just tedious repetitive work like pulling cables and stripping wires. Buy this:
It has everything you need to know about wiring to code, in easy to understand language(and pictures!). I did my garage with the info in it, past inspection no problem. Well worth the money, as understanding the code is tricky, and finding info online specific to Alberta is even harder. I had an electrician install my panel and main hookup, as I wasn't permitted to do that part, but I did everything else, including the in-panel stuff. Get a good wire stripper and a sharp knife, all you really need. This place has way better prices on circuit breakers than the box stores, and get wire by the spool.
Cool!
Would you say it makes the ceiling feel higher?
Absolutely feel higher. And they are higher. Ceiling is only as higher as lowest point, so while 8ft in most spots, beams and some ducting at 82 inches. Drop ceiling would have had to come in under 80 inches, and would have felt like cave.
Lots of homes now have nice high ceiling in basement, so less concern than it was in our case, even though home is not that old.
Quote:
Originally Posted by surferguy
I did something similar in an old condo I had except I painted all the pipes white and shined up the copper lines. I then hung some clearcoated plywood panels with lights on them. It made the room feel so much taller
I like this look but it wouldn’t work everywhere, how do you find the brightness during the winter?
Basement is walkout, so lots of windows probably helps not feel that way.
Would love to have seen your finished space!
Last edited by EldrickOnIce; 02-19-2020 at 08:10 AM.
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Ceiling felt low in spots, even though walkout. Took the idea from Matrix basement system: crown along top of wall everywhere, paint everything above crown flat black. Any mods that need doing later can be repainted. It wasn't hard to do, kind of lol, though I dressed like forensic guy while painting.
Thanks guys. After talking to a few people and getting some prices, i’m going to do it myself. Probably contract out the plumbing.
The drywall seems like a pain but hearing costs like $2000 -$5000 just for some taping and mudding, i’ll do it myself even if it takes longer.
Was hoping someone would come on cp and say they just did their basement for under $30,000 but that’s starting to sound unrealistic.
Keep in mind, I think your numbers are also missing quite a few things that you're probably kinda writing off as nothing/not including but contractors would charge full value.
1. Planning/reading/familiarizing yourself with a design
2. Prep/pre-clean
3. Travel/materials selection and acquisition
4. Clean up
I assuming if you were to drive out and grab drywall or even have it delivered that you're not considering that as time. Run out of screws and send someone out to buy some? Same thing. Finish cutting this and that and need to vacuum and throw stuff into the garbage? Ditto. Chatting with sub and explaining what needs to be done or arguing about why they didn't follow the blue print? Hourly rate or whatever.
Consider that a trades person does some of this stuff as a job. DIY has its place for sure, but sometimes if you DIY, it just keeps on getting pushed and nothing gets done.
Knowing what I know now and semi rant on some major snafus during my previous experiences....
Things you can do:
Spoiler!
IMO, for things you are hoping to sub out, spend the time to do the materials acquisition, prep like cleaning or taping etc. and even clean up. Spending 15-20 minutes to write things/draw pics on the wall with permanent marker can save hours. Also look at the big picture and don't be totally cheap with your savings. Spend the money on better materials and equipment as required. Making it easy on the subs can save quite a bit. A few hundred bucks on equipment that functions properly can probably save you time and grief (ie: a good shop vac/multiple shop vac vs a crappy domestic vacuum with crappy suction; a few bucks in ultra sharp olfa blades for box cutters for straighter/smoother cuts; slight premium for good materials/easy to use materials/materials they are familiar with etc.). If it's time, if you can save a few hours of a sub by equipping them better, you get a better result and that time savings essentially pays for the equipment that you get to keep.
Assuming your basement is completely empty and concrete, I'd grab some sidewalk chalk and start marking where you expect walls and outlets and cables (electrical, ethernet, plumbing etc.) and use that as a base point for accurate measurements and planning the blue prints. That's the biggest thing I'd change after everything vs eye balling things with subs and yourself. Mark it down and you can see things with better accuracy to the point you can use those lines to probably even plan furniture acquisitions and/or the ability to move materials in the enclosed spaces. This is especially helpful in discussing things with people with no imagination and/or improve visualization and help deal with issues before you start putting things up. You can even go as far as using spray paint and permanent marker to mark things in a more permanent later on so the subs don't have an excuse when they fuxxor something up (it'll be covered and painted over later on anyways). But sometimes, trying to help just gets in the way of the contractor due to rework/making the job more difficult. So keep that in mind too.
I've been a part of a few situations where the plans constantly had to be revised because the estimates didn't take into account existing vents or pillars or things like that. I've been a part of a development where the idiot GC put the blue print in a box and stacked crap on it and had subs running around with crappy photocopies of blue prints that were several drafts behind and incorrect.
Things I've learned developing my basement, standing in for the GC for an office development and refreshing my new home purchase are:
Spoiler!
- Paint: Don't pay full price. A place like Sherwin Williams will easily offer 30-40% off if you find the coupon and/or set up an account with them. Paint is surprisingly more expensive than expected.
- Floor: Especially basement floor, depending on how you'll use the basement floor, really spend the time to consider heated floor or use a hardwood underlay so that the floor isn't too cold.
- Materials wise: Spending 20-30% more isn't a big cost in the grand scheme of things. The time and labour and reversing a decision is the more expensive component IMO. For instance a Cat 7 cable might be double in price to something like a Cat 6, but for a few hundred bucks more for the entire home, you're future proofing by pulling 10 Gigabit vs 1 Gigabit lines. The Primecables website was pretty solid prices for this stuff. They sell on Amazon too. Spending a few bucks more per wall plate is another way to really make the place look snazzy. A couple hundred bucks worth of crown moulding and baseboards is also a pretty good use of money IMO. Timbertown had some pretty bonkers sales on occasion.
- Materials acquisition: Don't choose a single stop shop hardware store and settle. There are some things on Amazon that were better than what was available in store for a fraction of a price ranging from fixtures, hardware and dumb things like hinges. Plus the selection is more than most hardware stores and you can get the stuff delivered to your door vs driving out and dragging it home. I'd suggest shopping around and getting 2-3 prices on certain things. I used much of those savings to acquire premium materials than I would have obtained through a big box hardware store. I even looked in sourcing from a smaller town (Didsbury/Crossfield etc.) and I was able to get some pretty good deals sourcing a large order and making it an easy sale/margin/scheduling for them. They'd just drop off a pallet of the materials on their way out of town after they pick up their materials from their supplier in Calgary. Open box and clearance stuff is also sometimes fricken awesome.
- Additional cost savings: Other than volume/member discounts to do a quick check into, I acquired an Amazon credit card and took advantage of a 5% cash back offer. I believe there are other credit cards out there that will offer an introductory cash back offer of 4-5% for the first $2-5K in spending. Definitely consider looking into those. $5K worth of materials is $200-250 as a minimum.
- Lights: Many people glaze over this, but holy hell, it's crazy how different some places will look with $50 worth of 2700K LED light color lights vs 3000K LED light color lights. We're talking colors that appear and disappear like tan, purple, white etc. and/or colors that suddenly pop or become subtle. Not just paint, but hardware like brushed Pewter that suddenly looks closer to an oil rubbed bronze with the yellowy light vs satin silver or stainless steel in whiter light. I highly recommend playing with the different colors using floor lamps before settling on one or using combinations of certain ones.
- Cleaning costs vs building costs: A top down cleaning with a cleaning company might cost less than $500. A vent cleaning is about that to half that depending on the size of your home. You might save more than that by allowing work to be done closer to the construction site rather than let's say paying someone to work in a garage and walk across your home constantly with materials or to measure/re-measure etc. (which I did and I think it saved probably 5-10 hours on something tedious like baseboards which required distance plus stairs at times) Plus these professional cleaners might do a better job than you can and a clean nice finished build with no dust is kinda like that extra cherry on top that can kinda impress friends when you show them.
- Utility room sound: I highly recommend figuring out how to dampen sound from the utility room. This includes lengthening vents across the room further away from the furnace, dampeners, insulated walls to absorb sound, solid core doors to deaden sound etc. The guy I hired didn't do a good job and I had to sort out a few things after the work was done with a different HVAC guy later on which was more costly and not as effective as doing it right the first time. Plus, cleaning sucks.
I developed a roughed in (mainly plumbing) 650 sq ft ish basement for around $33-35K around 2015 through a GC I knew. I think you can keep your costs to your budget if you do certain things yourself and sub certain important parts of the project. You can also save a ton if you are careful with your acquisition costs. $50-100 bucks here and there might seem negligible, but consider if you do this 20-30 times, that's a few grand right there.
DoubleF's dumb anecdote:
Spoiler!
For the price, my basement had premium trim, a media room, a display landing, storage space, spare bedroom with attached full ensuite.
I think the GC had a few lazy subs that required him to show up on site in person to fix dumb things that weren't done right at all which ate away at his margin because he had to fix it out of his own pocket. Super dumb things like being morons and not using a few cents worth of wall plugs to install a towel holder, so time and effort to fix, patch and paint the holes plus replace the damaged towel rack. This after the thing ripped out of the wall when the GC did a demonstration with a winter jacket. Or major gaps in the base board/crown molding because the idiots installed some right side up and some upside down and went full "not my problem" on the work they did. The actual work done likely should have cost $3-5K more for the rework/removing lower end components for the upgraded components to agree to the contract and a discount to keep me from strangling the GC for a seemingly constant stream of things that had to be reversed because the subs were lazy and didn't double check before doing things. I also had to add around $1-2K of rework a few years later to fix some idiotic things that certain subs didn't do properly that required fixing (ie: mainly vents and cable pulling related).
I took all these lessons and did a major refresh (not really reno as it was mostly paint, trim and doors) on my recent home (3 floors) for around $40K. If I didn't learn those lessons, what I did on my place might have easily cost $70-80K through a GC.
EDIT: Oh and for doors. I had to install a ton of doors, so my savings were a bit bigger, but Ryobi has these door installation kits that include easy use chisels. My contractor was blown away that this product existed and could help with the chiseling for dead bolts and strike plates and hinges for the door, rather than have to chisel each one out completely free hand to make it fit at the frame or drag a door back and forth from a routing tool.
Have you considered getting permits or not? There are some important issues there. And also dito for doing your own drywall. That's the one thing I'd hire out for sure. And a plus 1 for making the framing perfect. It all starts there.
Have you considered getting permits or not? There are some important issues there. And also dito for doing your own drywall. That's the one thing I'd hire out for sure. And a plus 1 for making the framing perfect. It all starts there.
Forgot to mention the permits thing, but yeah, this is a pretty important one too. One of the super annoying things I ran into for permits with the GC I hired for the basement development wasn't even the contractors' fault. The city just took forever to process the permit. Because my unit was a town house, I was also required to get a letter from the board giving me approval to develop my basement. Somehow this wasn't explicitly requested at first for the permit application and being on the board, I was able to acquire the letter within a day of being notified by the city of the outstanding documentation. I assume this still delayed the permit by a few weeks and if I recall correctly the permit took something stupid like 10-12 weeks to approve.
I also recall certain things could be worked on while we waited on the permit, but it was very limited, so it's not like you're completely stuck doing nothing without the permit. You just can't do certain types of work or exceed a certain amount of work without the permit and inspections or something like that.
I'm glad my new house refresh didn't require permits due to it being just paint and replacement hardware/doors to a more modern design. Ugh that would have been a pain.
For the price, my basement had premium trim, a media room, a display landing, storage space, spare bedroom with attached full ensuite.
I think the GC had a few lazy subs that required him to show up on site in person to fix dumb things that weren't done right at all which ate away at his margin because he had to fix it out of his own pocket. Super dumb things like being morons and not using a few cents worth of wall plugs to install a towel holder, so time and effort to fix, patch and paint the holes plus replace the damaged towel rack. This after the thing ripped out of the wall when the GC did a demonstration with a winter jacket. Or major gaps in the base board/crown molding because the idiots installed some right side up and some upside down and went full "not my problem" on the work they did. The actual work done likely should have cost $3-5K more for the rework/removing lower end components for the upgraded components to agree to the contract and a discount to keep me from strangling the GC for a seemingly constant stream of things that had to be reversed because the subs were lazy and didn't double check before doing things. I also had to add around $1-2K of rework a few years later to fix some idiotic things that certain subs didn't do properly that required fixing (ie: mainly vents and cable pulling related).
I took all these lessons and did a major refresh (not really reno as it was mostly paint, trim and doors) on my recent home (3 floors) for around $40K. If I didn't learn those lessons, what I did on my place might have easily cost $70-80K through a GC.
And that's why, if you are going from scratch you put blocking in for towel bars, curtain rods etc. Plan ahead!
And that's why, if you are going from scratch you put blocking in for towel bars, curtain rods etc. Plan ahead!
Oh god that development ended ok, but it was an adventure as well.
I did ask for blocking. But the idiots put the plywood piece on the wrong bathroom wall and put dry wall over it before we saw what happened.
This was part of the lazy and dumb crap that was being pulled where we'd chat with them with the GC (who left them alone a few hours at a time because you'd think you couldn't screw it up) and they'd point at the wall they did it on and you just stare at them asking, "who the hell is putting a towel rod on that wall?" Blank stare, "Oh. I guess that's true. It doesn't make sense there"
They did the same bloody thing with reinforcing the wall for the entertainment unit TWICE. Once it was backing on the wall with the bathroom on the other side. GC removed the drywall to ensure they hadn't drilled into plumbing and asked them why they'd put it there when there was no electricity, etc pulled to it. "Oh, we thought the guy would pull it there afterwards. Second time was discovered when they were mounting the TV and weren't hitting enough studs. "Oh, seemed like the biggest wall would be the best wall." Seriously, you guys installed the reinforcement for the entertainment unit then were confused you weren't hitting the plywood piece when mounting the TV but didn't think it was because it was on the wrong fricken wall???
I think they even used scotch tape on an adjustable rubbermaid closet rod and claimed it was a tension rod. I told them to prove it and it crashed to the floor denting and scratching the hardwood. These guys were dumb, or high or the worst combinations of both.
The HVAC guy was another ordeal. He lied through his teeth saying the extra work (I was willing to pay for this on top of the agreed upon price with the GC) wasn't even necessary and the concerns I was trying to address with temperature and sound (mentioned to me by a building developer to spend the extra to do) wouldn't be an issue. So I trusted the guy. He's the professional after all I guess. Lo and behold issues with sound and lack of convection. Hired a new HVAC guy who was blown away that someone would be lazy enough to cut corners on a couple hundred bucks worth of work to do it properly. He was apologetic that the fix he could offer would reasonably work and would cost around $1K to sort out, but fixing it proper would cost like 5K because the basement was already done. "What was this guy thinking? It's just a simple $300-400 bucks worth of labour and materials and it's not like it was coming out of his own pocket."
I kinda feel for the GC though. His work was super solid and the only reason why he wasn't around were the initial permit delays and he had to spend most of his time to supervise another rush job. He asked if it was ok to use those guys with slightly less supervision or he'd return to my project in a month and do it himself and I agreed thinking these guys couldn't muck it up. I think those guys were related to him somehow and he needed to use them for family reasons. But they were lazy and dumb as plugs and essentially crapping on the reputation of his company if they weren't supervised with a eagle eye.
But yeah... you learn tons more from failures than successes.
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Holy crap, I’m out of thanks but so many wicked pictures.
I wanted to do the exposed dark painted ceiling in my basement. If currently has a #### job drywall drop, and gross tiles in the rooms. I hate drop ceiling tiles and am struggling to come up with an alternative to drywall ceiling.
My concern with exposed is sound insulation. It’s loud as hell up there already. Any ideas?
Holy crap, I’m out of thanks but so many wicked pictures.
I wanted to do the exposed dark painted ceiling in my basement. If currently has a #### job drywall drop, and gross tiles in the rooms. I hate drop ceiling tiles and am struggling to come up with an alternative to drywall ceiling.
My concern with exposed is sound insulation. It’s loud as hell up there already. Any ideas?
Maybe get a spray-foam guy in? You can spray paint that stuff afterwards.
Ceiling felt low in spots, even though walkout. Took the idea from Matrix basement system: crown along top of wall everywhere, paint everything above crown flat black. Any mods that need doing later can be repainted. It wasn't hard to do, kind of lol, though I dressed like forensic guy while painting.
Where did you get the black tiles from? Did you paint them? That’s a suspended ceiling i’m assuming. Bit hard to tell 100% from the picture.
Maybe get a spray-foam guy in? You can spray paint that stuff afterwards.
That stuff is good for temp insulation, but is it for sound?
I’m also a fire guy so I’m unnecessarily against that stuff. It is a great product though, I just wouldn’t have it exposed in my ceiling. Its super flammable.
- Materials wise: Spending 20-30% more isn't a big cost in the grand scheme of things. The time and labour and reversing a decision is the more expensive component IMO. For instance a Cat 7 cable might be double in price to something like a Cat 6, but for a few hundred bucks more for the entire home, you're future proofing by pulling 10 Gigabit vs 1 Gigabit lines.
I do agree with many things in your post and the general point you are trying to make but you have errors in the above.
Cat6 can do 10 Gigabit on distances less than 55 metres (180 feet). 6a can do 330 feet. 180 is long enough for most houses.
Cat 7 is expensive and extremely uncommon in residential. It is about $0.65 ft as oppose to Cat 6 ~$0.13 ft, so approximately 500% more. It is thicker and harder to pull, so it would take longer to install.
As a professional, I would recommend either 6 or 6a. If future proofing is the main concern then conduit or perhaps fibre might be a consideration.
I have seen so many basements that are poorly constructed DIY projects. With proper inspection, the finished product would be detrimental to the sale of the home down the road. The persons that took on these projects lacked some combination of skill, patience, knowledge, and / or effort.
The point I am trying to make is that good professionals will give proper advice and achieve a good end result. It takes a considerable effort, knowledge, learnt skill etc for DIY to pull off a similar result. It is certainly not impossible to do and I have seen many well-done basements by homeowners, but have seen many mediocre to poor ones as well.
Last edited by cupofjoe; 02-19-2020 at 11:56 PM.
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Holy crap, I’m out of thanks but so many wicked pictures.
I wanted to do the exposed dark painted ceiling in my basement. If currently has a #### job drywall drop, and gross tiles in the rooms. I hate drop ceiling tiles and am struggling to come up with an alternative to drywall ceiling.
My concern with exposed is sound insulation. It’s loud as hell up there already. Any ideas?
Yes drywalled ceilings look nicer than a suspended ceiling but sorry, drywalled ceiling in a basement is big no go. Almost the entire guts of your house are in the basement ceiling. If you need access to absolutely anything you are out of luck. Sure you could cut out and patch drywall but do you know in exactly which spot the issue is coming from? Good luck matching the paint after the drywall fix. Think of all the things that you put up with in your house because it’s somewhere behind the drywall.
Drywalled ceilings are nice for showhomes to make it look pretty. They want to sell the house and could care less if you need access in the future.
Matter of fact if i’m buying a house and they have a ceiling drywalled in the basement i start wondering how many issues they’ve put up with because there’s no access.
Drywalled basement ceilings are a big no go.
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^
Some good points there. I made some panels for my utility room for cheap, just to get something up there, but the main room I'm going to have to re-do sometime. What are the options out there? I don't want a drop ceiling that looks like my office at work...
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