This summer, we started a project we’ve been excited about since Day 1 of our home renovation: our basement! We hired a contractor friend to help us finalize our basement layout design ideas so we’ll be ready to build as soon as possible. A few oddities to work around have made creating a layout for our narrow basement quite the challenge. Here’s how we’re making it work.
- Our Dream Basement Layout Design Ideas
- DIY Basement Renovation
- Interior Design Tips & Solutions for Our Narrow Basement Layout
- Narrow Basement Living Room
- Basement Wet Bar & Kitchenette
- Basement Guest Room & Office
- Basement Playroom & Craft Area
- Basement Bathroom
- Basement Laundry Room
- Basement Storage
- Basement Layout Design Ideas: Small Basement DIY Remodel
Our Dream Basement Layout Design Ideas
Our basement is long and narrow, and when it’s finished it will double the size of our livable space. This will be the main area in which we spend time as a family.
So we need it to work hard and function well for us.
Our design goals for this basement layout include:
- Living room for watching movies
- Kitchenette and bar
- Guest room
- Additional bathroom
- Laundry room (currently in our kitchen)
- Kids’ workspace for crafts
- Playroom for gymnastics and toys
- Storage for decor and miscellaneous items
With 1100 sqft to work with, we can squeeze it all in!
We want to be able to host guests and families easily. As well as enjoy a cozy basement haven with lots of family time.
Here is our basic basement layout right now:
We’ve been spinning our wheels trying to create our narrow basement design on our own.
It’s a lot harder to create a layout than I expected!
Especially when there are some tricky or awkward pieces to navigate around: like egress windows, plumbing, HVAC systems, etc.
So last month we asked our contractor friend Rebecca to help sort through all our basement layout design ideas.
DIY Basement Renovation
We want to DIY as much of this basement build as we can.
Having an official floor plans to work from will help us move faster, work more efficiently, and avoid costly mistakes in our DIY basement renovation.
This layout includes everything we need for electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and framing to make our design happen.
This will make the city building permit smoother since we can just submit this layout for approval.
And when it comes time to hire the major plumbing, electrical, and HVAC work, we can communicate exactly what we need and where with this design layout.
I’m so glad we hired her because she’ll give us a full plan for plumbing, electrical, and framing. So we can easily submit this for city building permits, use it for each DIY step, or hand it off to a building professional if needed.
Interior Design Tips & Solutions for Our Narrow Basement Layout
Rebecca came over to measure everything and outlined potential basement layout design ideas for us.
Basement Layout Design Version 1:
Troubleshooting Egress Windows
Basement bedrooms are required to have an egress window for fire safety code.
We only have two egress windows in the basement. One on each end of our back wall.
Egress windows can be expensive to install, and with our recent foundation issues, I’m not confident that’s the best solution.
So one of the egress windows needs to be part of the guest bedroom!
I considered moving our basement stairs and utilizing the right basement window for a bedroom. This would allow for a bigger living space down here.
But that would require us to move plumbing, water lines, and HVAC, as well as to reconfigure our upstairs layout. It just didn’t make sense.
We’ll work with what we have!
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Troubleshooting A Utility Closet
Another tricky part of our layout is the utility closet placement. It holds our HVAC and water heater and would be crazy expensive and invasive to move.
So it has to stay put.
It’s in a very inconvenient spot, making our living space pretty narrow.
We also have plumbing and a steel framing beam that hangs pretty low. These will need to be in a ceiling soffit.
I like the workaround she created for these issues!
The hallway around the utility closet will provide our bathroom privacy and block noise from the laundry room.
We went through several rounds of layout changes and ended with this final design:
- Shrink the bedroom to make the living room larger
- Combine the storage closet and bedroom closet
- Move the laundry room to the very back to make it more functional
- Shrink the bathroom to make the kitchenette/bar bigger
- Move the kitchenette to the back wall to create a big focal point there
Basement Layout Revision:
Narrow Basement Living Room
Friday nights are family nights. We want this space to be as comfy cozy as possible so we can crash with pizza and a movie. With a pit couch, a movie projector, and lots of blankets.
Narrow Basement Living Room Pinterest Inspiration
Since this is a narrow basement, this space will end up being a little more squished than I originally planned. But I think with the right shaped couch and the right couch placement, we can pull it together easily. I will need to think through more seating ideas for this space.
Basement Wet Bar & Kitchenette
I’ve been dreaming of a swanky, whiskey-lounge-style basement bar and kitchenette for our basement remodel DIY.
Placing the kitchenette on the back wall will allow us to go big with the design.
Think colorful tile, arched nook, dark woods, lots of soft lighting, and fancy drinkware. We plan to have lots of cabinet space for a snack bar, a small sink, and a mini drink fridge.
Basement Bar Pinterest Inspiration
This also gives us room for a seating area, which can be part of our entertaining space. This will create an open flow between the living room, lounge area, and kitchenette.
I want it to feel big and open but also connected. I think this will accomplish that goal! While still drawing lots of attention to the kitchenette itself.
This addition would allow us to easily host movie nights and parties. I imagine we’ll keep this stocked with drinks and snacks for book clubs and game nights.
I think this will become a favorite spot in our home.
Basement Guest Room & Office
We initially wanted a big guest suite down here.
But with the tricky placement of the utility closet, we opted for a smaller bedroom to keep everything else a priority.
This will be a multi-functional room: an office nook and a guest bedroom. We plan to add a Murphy bed so that this room can have plenty of space in our every-day use.
We can easily convert it as needed by pushing the desk against the wall and pulling the bed down! Easy.
Basement Office & Guest Room Pinterest Inspiration
Basement Playroom & Craft Area
One space our family needs is a playroom. Our kids have lots of energy and love to practice their gymnastics. We also don’t have much storage for toys and games upstairs.
So we plan to leave the open, narrow space at the base of our stairs all for open play! We plan to add a row of built-in desks for crafts and homework and toy storage too.
Our kids share a small bedroom upstairs, so I see this as an extension of their space. Giving them each a desk for future homework will be very practical too.
Basement Kids’ Playroom & Craft Space Pinterest Inspiration
Basement Bathroom
We have two bathrooms upstairs that are very small.
So in my initial basement layout design ideas, I wanted a big bathroom with a soaking giant tub.
But as we navigated the tricky parts of this basement, and to keep costs from skyrocketing by moving plumbing, we decided on a smaller, more simple bathroom.
This will help us prioritize the kitchenette and laundry room, and we won’t need to trench through the basement concrete nearly as much.
Designing small bathrooms is so fun for me. It’s a great spot to go bold!
Basement Bathroom Pinterest Inspiration
Basement Laundry Room
Almost everyone I’ve talked to has tried to encourage me away from putting the laundry room in the basement.
And I get it! I don’t want a basement laundry room because, let’s be real, we never fold our clothes. Every morning we dig through the clean laundry basket like animals to find our outfit for the day.
Odds are this will drive us mad to have the laundry room in the basement.
However, our laundry room is currently in the kitchen. It’s cramped, awkward, and loud. And I hate this even more! I want to expand the size of our kitchen and create a better flow.
We don’t have any other easy, convenient places to put the laundry room in the upstairs layout, so out of all our basement layout design ideas, I think this makes the most sense.
Basement Laundry Room Pinterest Inspiration
We plan to add a big, spacious laundry room with counter space and extra storage.
If we can make it beautiful enough, maybe we’ll be motivated enough to actually fold our laundry and put it away?…
Basement Storage
We don’t have a great place for storing items for decor, books, out-of-season clothes, etc. So we want to create a big storage area to keep these organized and out of the way.
Initially, we had a separate storage room off of the laundry room for this. However we opted to expand the guest bedroom closet and use that as our main storage closet.
We don’t foresee this being an issue for any reason. This helps us fill an odd space in our layout and it makes the most sense!
Basement Layout Design Ideas: Small Basement DIY Remodel
We’ve been learning a lot through this layout design process. I’m so glad we hired an experienced contractor with a design mind to get us sorted on these basement layout design ideas!
She’s been so helpful in informing us of city codes and building practices to watch out for. She does lots of DIYs herself and has been able to answer so many questions.
Basement Remodel Pinterest Inspiration
This is a massive renovation project for us. We plan to take these finished basement designs and DIY as much as we can. I’d love to hire out some parts of it to make it go faster: plumbing, electrical, and drywall specifically.
Nathan’s pretty confident that he can (and wants) to do those himself. But I want to be cautious of this project taking over every weekend for the next year.
Included in our plans is install a sump pump for water mitigation, replace our egress windows, update the window well design, and open up the stairs to make it all feel bigger.
We plan to go step-by-step through this DIY basement renovation and take each challenge as it comes. After all we’ve been through in our abandoned, fixer-upper home, and in our basement especially, we’re so ready to make this space amazing.
Join us as we bring our basement layout design ideas to life!
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