Our house has a walk-out basement. When your pull-up to the front of the house, it appears to be a 2-story home but from the back, you see the 3 stories. The initial size of the house is miss-leading. Mind you that this house is 2200 square feet and consists of six bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, living room, dining, kitchen, foyer, large play room/rec room, laundry, utility room, small mudroom, study room area and storage. We still have room to add another bedroom and bathroom.
But to look at the house, you would not think that all of these rooms are in this house but I am very proud of our use of space and the layout of the house (which I initially designed). I was very, very conscious about the use of space and getting our “bang for our buck” with how the house was organized by spaces.
We took some of our budget and didn’t finish 1/3 of the 2nd floor and put that money into the basement. I knew we would use that space more than another bedroom and another bathroom (cleaning 4 is enough).
Our contractor (Dave Pugh, who was awesome) insisted on putting in heated floors in the basement (best idea ever) and we are very glad we did. My older son (who is 11) wanted an area to run and pretend football play, etc. so, with the wide open of the basement, we decided to turf part of it for football/basketball playing (rough housing in general). My son is 160 pounds so any movement through the house is like a herd of elephants. But in the basement, he can run, throw, shoot hoops, have friends over, etc. and the house does not shake!
Turf is cheap, easy to clean and Brandon Hickle installed it for us and he was super reasonable and did great work. All in all, we spent maybe $460 on purchasing the turf, the seam pieces and installation on a space that is about 10 feet wide by 18 feet long. Mind you that our basement still consists of a rec room (with the turf), an office, bedroom, bathroom, utility room and a laundry room. My kids have played non-stop on it, their friends have played on it and pretty much any kid that is at my house, ends up on wanting to play on the turf. We put up football toys, basketball hoop and put out the tractors (you can farm on the turf as well)!
Then, when the kids are older, or no longer use it, we can pull it up and put the rest of the flooring down. Some people thought we were crazy to put in turf but now that it is in, and everyone can see how much fun the kids have with it, and it looks great; we are completely sold on it. BEST. IDEA. EVER.
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