What to Expect when Finishing your Basement

This little journey started in December 2013. Matt and I came up with a floor plan to finish our basement, and while my whole family was here for Christmas, the guys started framing. It helps when your sister's boyfriend is a master builder. He directed all the know-nothings very well.

After that week, the basement was hardly touched for another eight months. I had a baby in March, so I wasn't very helpful for the first half of 2014, and Matt didn't have much motivation to work by himself down there. Here I am being pregnant and unhelpful.

Then came a deadline:  Matt's family would be coming to Michigan for Thanksgiving. Seven extra adults, twin babies, and a fetus were heading our way, and they needed space! These holiday plans were made in August, so for the next three months, our lives were consumed by the basement project.

Just in case any of you are entertaining the idea of finishing your own basement, or are just interested in the process, I put together my perspective of the whole experience. I hope it's helpful.

~ What to Expect when Finishing your Basement ~

Expect to need more tools and more materials than you can imagine. Expect to go to the hardware store at least twice a week for months. Expect to start feeling guilty for not remembering the employees' names. Especially the old grump at the paint counter who finally warmed up to you, or the not so old guys who like to ask follow up questions because they remember what you were here for last week.

Expect to sign up for Home Depot/Lowes credit cards. Just do it from the beginning. You'll get a 5% discount every time, and it will keep track of all your purchases for the many returns you'll be making. Bought too many light switches? (And you will.) You don't have to find the receipt. It's very handy. Plus, every time you whip it out, you feel like an exclusive member of the bad-A home construction club (especially if you're a girl), so...why wouldn't you?

Expect to become best friends with YouTube. YouTube will teach you all things. YouTube doesn't laugh when you ask dumb questions or watch a video 20 times until you get it. I feel like I should send YouTube Shannon from Canada a family Christmas card because he's taught us so much.

Expect to get super excited about every little step that is accomplished. You installed a recessed light? Hooray! That's one less thing to do on your list of five million tasks. Seriously, expect to see lists like this all over the place. Lists that keep growing even as you cross things off. We'll call them hydra lists. Bonus points if you can read Matt's writing.

Expect to gain a lot of knowledge about the stuff that's behind the walls of your house. You're gonna learn what all those wires do, even if you don't want to! Even jobs that you weren't directly involved in, you'll need to learn about so you're able to check the work of others.

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Expect your kids to want to help you. It's usually at the most inconvenient time, but it's still really cute. Here, they're helping me test out the softness of some carpet samples.

Expect to mess up. Like, a LOT. Especially if this is your first time doing such projects. This shows the mess from a water line that accidentally got hit by a nail gun-- and that was from the experienced builder. You'll spend a lot of time redoing and figuring out and reading directions and watching YouTube videos, but like any type of schooling, studying takes time. And when you finally figure it out, that's a skill you have for life. Next time you need to use that tool or install that trim or wire that outlet, you can do it yourself! Without being intimidated! Imagine the confidence.

Look at all that insulation taking up space in the garage. It has to get to the basement somehow. Remember how your kids want to help you? Use them!

Whenever possible, try to turn this horrible, exhausting work into FUN with your family. Matt and I got creative covering ourselves head to toe with protection from that hellish stuff called insulation. And it was an awful, awful job. But when you can complain together, and laugh at how the other one looks in the process, I promise it's less miserable.

Expect your routine as a mother to be affected in the following ways:

Expect to get very little sleep, and have no physical energy for anything else. Expect to do the bulk of your work when children are in bed, and to wake up often feeling like you survived a good beating.

Expect to never get ready for the day, except on Sundays for church. (Wait, this is pretty much my whole life anyway.) And even then, you showered late the night before, after another long Saturday of work, so you have bed head. But at least you don't stink!

Expect to have dry, sore, ugly hands all the time. Sorry about this. Also expect people to point out the paint in your hair and on your elbows every time you come up to see the light of day.

Expect the rest of your house to remain a complete disaster until you are finished. Because of this, expect to not be able to invite many friends over during for a while. As I mentioned before, you have little energy or attention for anything else anyway, so you will become a temporary hermit.

And expect to eat quick meals and fast food a lot. Your kids will survive. I promise.

Expect to hire some jobs out. We knew that with this large amount of space, trying to do drywall ourselves would be a disaster. So Matt shopped around for the best deal, as he did with plumbers, HVAC guys, and wholesale carpet installers. These are the parts of the basement that you can actually see, as opposed to what's behind the walls, so we wanted them to look more professional.

When that carpet goes in and you can finally put a couch down, expect your children to do a full on victory dance that will make your heart explode with pride. You have given them more space to run like wild animals! Great job!

Expect to catch your six-year-old reading articles like this from your Handyman magazine subscription. Be quietly surprised when he doesn't even ask what "ass" means, but instead explains to you how this cool ceiling fan works. 

Expect your three-year-old to grab any stray tools you have left out and wreak havoc on many surfaces. When you find him scratching at your beautiful new walls, try to calmly redirect him to a cardboard box instead. If you accidentally turn this into an opportunity to teach your child about appropriate times to use swear words, I won't judge.

Expect to feel amazingly awesome that you understand what to do with all these wires to complete the circuit. Expect to feel confident installing smoke alarms, switches, outlets, light fixtures, even disco balls! Just kidding. But seriously, I hope I get the chance to install a disco ball some day.

Expect to have many photos on your phone that look like this, so you'll remember to get exactly the right stuff at the hardware store. There are so many different kinds of paint. I dare you to not mess up a single order.

Expect your spouse to take embarrassing pictures of you while you're painting in your uggo work clothes and Valentine socks. This one isn't bad. You should see the one he affectionately calls "old man butt".

Expect to no longer be intimidated by pipes, hardware, wires, or pretty much any kind of power tool. You will become proficient with them all! Except maybe a table saw. Those things still scare me. Probably because of the cartoons I used to watch.

Expect to fall in love with certain inanimate objects, like your counter top. I'm sorry you can't see the magic from this photo, but I deeply love that smooth, clean, polished, elegant suface.

Are you ready for this? We're done!

When you're finally done, expect to have a few days where you feel off, wondering what to do with yourself. You will be so used to spending every free moment working on the basement, that you might not know how to resume normal life. Don't worry, it will all come back. You've earned a few days off anyway.

And when everything is all vacuumed and tidied up, get down there with your family and roll around on the carpet for a while, admiring your work. Skype your family and show them the fruits of your labors.

Finally, expect not to cry when you put your house up for sale and move across the country immediately after finishing this mammoth project. Then cry anyway.

As my parting word after this long post--- ladies, let me tell you, YOU CAN DO THIS!  Finishing a basement is not all brute-strength-type jobs. You don't have to have massive muscles for most of the work. A lot of it involves fine motor details and a balanced eye. Like the chop saw -- that's my jam! I was involved in the entire project, making it as much my baby as it is Matt's. It was time spent together, learning together, checking each other's work. It saved us a lot of money to do most of it ourselves, and it will hopefully help our house sell. I'm really proud to have contributed to that.

Having said all that, I'm kind of glad we are renting in Seattle for a while before starting more projects on a fixer upper house. My hands are still recovering!