Doubling Our Space

It's strange-the original owners intended to
finish the basement but never installed a sump so that was one of the
first things we had to do

So, we've started remodeling our basement.   We've been pretty busy so we've hired out not only the electrical and plumbing but also the framing and drywall work.  Since we aren't doing the work ourselves, there's not much to blog about.  I will mention cabinets though.  We just need a small vanity for the bathroom but finding one turned to out be rather hard.  The local cabinet maker who did our kitchen cabinets wasn't very interested in such a small job and the stuff from Home Depot and Menard's was surprisingly limited and poor quality for the price.  I was thinking Ready-To-Assemble might be a better deal but the shipping cost for one cabinet really jacked up the cost.   I found a company that makes bamboo cabinets out in California, Laguna Bamboo, that had some really nice cabinets and they were willing to ship to Wisconsin, but in the end we ordered semi-custom instead.  I'm going to keep Laguna in mind though for when we redo our master bath...

We used rigid foam board to insulate the walls
and metal studs for all except the bathroom
since no walls will be load-bearing.

Oh, and we thought we were going to have to take the frame off the patio door to get the one-piece shower we ordered into the basement but it fit just fine.  We got a 36" wide unit so it was pretty small.  We had a hard time purchasing it though.  We found it on the Delta website, ordered it from Home Depot, found out HD couldn't order it because it was a Lowe's exclusive, and then got the run-around from Lowe's and Delta but finally got one after tons of phone calls and losing a couple of months in the process.  It's just want we wanted though so I guess it's all good.

The future bathroom is small but will have a sink,
toilet and shower stall

It might just be a gimmick but we figured we'd try
out the Platon sub-floor that put a small space between
the concrete and the sub-floor to keep it warm and dry.
If we're lucky it'll help with reducing radon as well.

We have about one or two more work days for plumbing and two for electrical.  We will be putting in electrical heat under the bathroom floor and an automatic humidity-sensing fan by the shower.  We also need to update our water heater to handle another bathroom and solve some problems with our existing water flow.  Once those are out of the way, it just drywall and flooring and finish work.  And then we'll have doubled our space!