If you have a basement, how do you use it?

i use our basement for laundry, for a pantry and for my craft area primarily. right now we have a guy living down there (for another month) then am not sure what we will do with the space.

Hi SnuggleBunnies, I don't have a basement but the one in my fathers house has been made into a games room with a snooker table, darts board, card table and bar with optics. The one in my brothers old house was used as a fish rescue centre, it was wall to wall ceiling to ceiling in tanks with a shark tank in the middle all heated by the room rather than individually which saved on costs. I woulod love to have a space like that and would probably convert into a den for the kid to hang out with their mates and for sleepovers etc. Huggles. Ellie :D

Like you, I have some leaking when we get heavy rains. I had a guy come look at it and he said if I dug (covered) window wells outside the basement windows that it would solve the problem--wow, I could not believe I found an honest salesman! He could have sold me an expensive rehab! I plan to have the well dug next year when I can better afford it and until then any water that come in goes down the drain for my washer. It's not a lot but I had to take up the area rug that the former owner had put down--he had furniture down there and everything so this must either be recent or he knew it wouldn't leak in the winter when people were looking at the house! Anyway, my basement has a steam room that I never use but its benches are great for holding emergency supplies. I have a month's worth of food and water in that room (for both me and my dogs) and it is my storm room in case a tornado comes. There is also a shower in there and a toilet by the washer and dryer plus a laundry sink so I essentially have a full bath down there--just a bit spread out! I just use my basement for storage right now and the occasional guest room when more than two members of my family are visiting which is very rare. A basement was one of my requirements for a house. When the leak is fixed I plan to put the rug back down and have a nice chair, lamp, books, etc down there.

We don't necessarily have a basement. It's more like a playroom/office area down stairs. We have a half wall divider so half the room is an office area and the other half is for the kids to play in. It's not very big but it works well for now.

Right now the only thing I really use our basement for is laundry and storage. The spare bedroom is down there as well. Once we get renovating down there I would like to open up the rec room a little more so we can have the space for a bar and a pool table. I would also like to move our office down there and have more of an open office 'nook' than an actual room. We have one super small bedroom down there that is pretty useless so I would like to find out about knocking out some walls to open it up to the rec room. Sigh, one day!

We have a basment and for year is was the collection of all the crap we didn't know what to do with. But then I had my daughter and need to work so now it has become a daycare. It is nice to be able to be seperate from the rest of the house but with a daughter now we could really use the space. I would love to be able to turn it into a playroom for her but by time I am done using it as a daycare she won't need a playroom anymore. So it will probably become something cool again for a few months and the piling will probably start again. Is there anyway something could be done about the water?? Or would it just be too expensive to fix?

I have a full basement, mostly finished, and it's more room than I need. There is a bedroom and a larger room, plus a big laundry room and another room that could be a bedroom, but I use it for a pantry and storage for canners and jars, and things like that. We don't have trouble with basement flooding here - knock on wood!

Mine is just a partial basement, and it is not what you would call a "good" basement. It is not even really used for storage at this time. It has a furnace and two hot water heaters, and the breaker box for the first floor and years worth of junk. We can go there in a tornado, though. I would just put lawn furniture down there.

our soil is so thin here, if you have 4 feet of dirt (and this is a very clay-ey dirt in most places) you are doing good, then its bedrock! if I had one, it'd be, probably at best, a storm cellar...

hi 3SnuggleBunnies I havenever had a basement and now live in a retirement center but if I had a house with a basement I would make a den and an extra bedroom out of it, divide up the space. I am dreaming now but that would have been fun. here in Southern California you rarely ever find homes with basements, cause of the tremors I guess.

No basement here, obviously. When we had one we used it for storing garbage... yeah, literally! We've never been good about finding ways to get rid of broken sofas, microwaves, our old waterbed mattress... so these things would accumulate in our garage or basement. These days those type things are accumulating in our shed.. and taking up all the space in there so we have no room for storage.. ugh! In a perfect world, I'd probably use a basement as an extra bedroom.. so that one of the boys could have his own room.. probably the oldest. Ideally I'd have a 4 bedroom house and use the basement as a 5th bedroom so every kid except the youngest 2 would have their own room.

Our basement is a mix of and entertainment room, office for my mom, and gym. There's also a good amount of storage space. I'm house sitting now, and the woman's basement is completely empty. There's literaly nothing in it, and she's lived here 10 years.

I currently use my basement space for storing all kinds of instruments, goods and old stuff that I don't need anymore. But for instance, one of my friends had a basement a bit smaller than mine and made it a room to stay in during summer. It can get really hot some of the summer days and staying down is cool. He just put a TV, a radio and two small benches to sit on. It's a nice place. It can get like 5 or 6 persons in but not more because the ceiling has a kind of sharp hanging things and if you are not careful you can get hurt, you know. But if you think about it's kind of creepy. See if you could fix your basement so when it rains it doesn't collect water. There are ways. I can think of at least two. You can put a barrier just next to where the water collects and it should go outside not inside. Of course I wouldn't put any expensive things in there because there is a chance in a really strong rain storms everything can get wet. So don't try too risky things. How big is your basemet. Mine is about thirty square meters and my friend's is about twenty five.

we have a basement at home.. we used it as a secondary living room.. we placed a television set down there and it also serve as a stock room at the same time. My sisters and i love to spend time down there studying and taking a nap or just listening to music because it's cold down there.