The Basement Flooded...Now What?! Functionalizing a Basement: Part 1

Apr 10

Basements are a pretty common feature of many midwestern homes. The wonderful thing about basements is that they typically truly are accessory spaces to the home, meaning most of the rooms aren’t required, per se. Sometimes there will be a bed and bath set up that is necessary for a family, but aside from that, basements can really be a fun place to dream big, like say, a full spa in the basement of a home I helped design, including a wet & dry sauna, cold plunge & hot tub, shower, fireplace, TV, and lots of space to lounge and relax.

Designed with a team while working at Hufft, Photography by Michael Robinson

The Basement Flooded

Unfortunately, basements can also be a place of moisture issues. I have heard of countless basements in the Midwest encountering water damage due to leaky window wells, heavy rains, living in a floodplain area, sewer backups, poorly graded landscaping, and faulty sump pumps. And with the combination of the last two, my clients landed in the position of ripping out all carpet, 4’+ of drywall, and airing out their basement with industrial fans for days.

Now What?!

When my clients reached out to me after this happened, I was first totally bummed for them. Zach & I have had to deal with our own water issues in multiple homes and know what a pain in the butt it is. However, when walking the site and hearing about how the basement had previously functioned for them, I was so excited because I knew we could come up withe a plan to make their basement so much more functional for them and their lifestyle.

The current basement was set up as a secondary living space, office, fitness room, bathroom, laundry, and brewing/alcohol room. However, the spaces themselves were not very functional: the office space was a part of the living space, the living space had a column in the middle and a fireplace directly behind the column (almost in a hallway), the fitness room was extremely long (which led to lots of underutilized space), the bath and laundry were outdated, and the brewing/alcohol room was basically just for storage.

Functionalizing a Basement

Through programming (the pre-design phase of a project where we define goals, functional requirements, and spatial needs), we determined a few key things:

Entertaining and cocktail making/wine tasting were hobbies that the clients wanted to capitalize on in the basement.
Exercising in-home was important, but could function in a smaller space.
The office wasn’t required to be in the basement.
Functional storage for mountain climbing gear was a need.

Based on these key functions and testing a few different layouts, we made the following adjustments to the floor plan:

Removed the column in the middle of the entertaining space (adding a structural steal beam) to allow for larger seating area focused on a new fireplace/TV feature wall. This feature wall also relocated the laundry room door to be accessed directly from the bathroom instead of the living space.
Divided the current workout space into two rooms, one for climbing gear storage without windows, and one as the relocated “brewing room”, during it into a functional cocktail lounge and wet bar.
The exercise room would move to the current “brewing room” which was smaller and more adequately proportioned in size.
A room upstairs with great windows and natural light, currently functioning as a storage room for their mountain climbing gear, would be changed into an office space that would offer more privacy than the current set-up.

Previous Floor Plan

Proposed Floor Plan

Look & Feel / Renderings

After determining the plan layout, we moved on to mood boards/look & feel and started to bring the vision to life with renderings. The clients each had their own unique tastes so brining their styles together was key. While the husband was more drawn toward traditional design - intricate and unique details of the Art Neaveau and Crafstman periods - the wife was more drawn toward clean, Scandinavian design.