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Phoenix Home Services can help you with all your basement remodeling needs. The first step in a basement-remodeling job is to talk to contractors who design and build basement projects.

Finishing your existing basement can be a good alternative to putting on an addition, which could be more money and hassle. Your house is sitting on perfectly good space all you need to do is finish your basement! Remolding your basement in the average Northern Virginia house will add 33% more living space.

The first step to remodeling your basement is to meet with us. Well show you the ends and outs of transforming your unfinished basement into living space. We will supply home owners with some ideas and get space planning advice, design options, and pricing.

Basements can be pretty depressing places. Often they’re seen as dark and dank and relegated to storage spaces. However, with careful planning and special attention to insulation, heating, and lighting, your basement can be transformed into a comfortable, inviting space. To remodel a basement in Fairfax County, Prince William County. Loudoun County and Arlington County requires that your contractor will be required to pull a building permit. Not only a building permit is need but your contractor will needs to arrange for his sub contractors to pull electrical, plumbing, and HVAC permits.

The first step is for your contractor to check if there are any water problems, or water proofing issues to be addressed before your basement remodeling project is started. This water related problems must be addressed before any work can start. After All the planning for your basement is complete your contractor will start by checking your electrical panel to make sure there are is room in your panel for the additional circuits that are going to be needed for outlets, lighting, and additional options you may need for your basement project.

If you plan to have a bedroom in your basement remodeling project and you live in northern Virginia you will need an egress window installed. Click Here For Egress Window Information The first step will be to break your basements floor to ruff in any plumbing needed for a new bathroom, wet bar, or laundry area. After this step the wall and ceiling of your basement will need to be framed out.

Remember most County codes require pressure treated base 2x4’s for the framing detail. Once the framing is complete an electrician will ruff in all, outlets, switches, gfi outlets, and other electrical options you may need in your new basement. Ligtgting fixture are an important step in any basement project, your basement is a dark area. Northern Virginia Contractor .com recommends high hat or what most home owners know as recessed lighting fixtures will need to be installed Your electrician or other contractor will pre wire alarm systems, phone cables, cat 3, speaker, and cable television wiring.

Now your plumbing contractor will ruff in hot and cold water lines and waste line for your new basement project for your wet bar bathroom ECT. For the bathroom you need to have the diverter and mud pan liner installed before county inspection. Then your contractor will arrange for the HVAC contractor to install the duck work and air returns to keep your basement cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Your contractor will then call in for a ruff in inspection.

After the contractor has passed the ruff in inspection all walls and may be your ceilings of your basement will need to be insulated. After the insulation has been installed the insulation will be needed to be inspected along with any fire blocking that will be required. After the ruff in inspection is complete your contractor will start hanging the drywall. The drywall in a basement needs a tape coat, block coat, and then a skim coat. These coats of dry wall mud need to be inspected for problems with a high powered light. When problems are detected NorthernVirginiaContractor.com add a little red dye to point up the defects. Then all drywall in your basement will require a good sanding and re- check for drywall problems. The next step in your basement project is to have all wall prime coated with primer paint.

The walls of your basement need to be re checked for flaws at this point. Any flaws need to be re pointed. The fowling is to paint he wall of your basement with your choice of band and colors. Then the doors of the rooms need to be installed, most basement projects in northern Virginia have 6 panel colonial doors installed. At this point any bathroom, bar, or book cases will be installed. After the door is installed ceramic, marble, carpet, or laminated flooring will be installed. All ceramic, marble, glass block, or stone tile needs to be set on your mud pan, shower walls, bathroom floors. After your flooring are installed base board, crown, and other molding will be installed and finished coated.

After the trim is installed in your basement project needs to be coated with the final coat of paint. The next step is to have the plumber install the bathtub, vanity top. The final step is to install all fans trim, lighting trim, outlet covers, and vent covers. After the basement project is complete the county needs to come in and final all contraction work. The team at NorthernVirginiaContractor.com works with top of the line contractors that work in Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County. Including the cities of Ashburn, Annandale, Alexandria, Burke, Bristow, Clifton, Dale City, Falls Church, Great Falls, Herndon, Lorton, Leesburg, Manassas, Mclean, North Reston, Reston, Springfield, Sterling, South Riding, Tyson’s Corner, Wood Bridge, and Oakton Virginia.

Another thing you’ll have to consider is the trade off between the warm feeling of carpeting versus the risk of invisible moisture even seemingly dry basements can have this problem when wet humid weather condensation can occur on the cool basement floors in Norhern Virginia. Even in the layers of carpeting, giving it a musty odor. Good quality carpeting along with a sub-flooring of 1-inch of polystyrene foam and then a 5/8-inch sheet of plywood will eliminate this problem. If you like the look of wood flooring, it’s probably safer to go with a laminate look alike. Most laminate manufacturers guarantee their product for basements, even without insulated sub-flooring. Floors are not the only at risky parts of a basement in Northern Virginia. The walls also deserve special attention to protect them from wet condensation. Styrofoam is a water stoper mold resistant foam that includes channels for lumber for convenient construction.

One of the causes of all the moisture problems in basements is that it can get so much cooler in below ground basement rooms. This is because of two things. The first is that warm air rises it goes to the top floors of your house. The second is that basements generally don’t have a lot of sunlight coming in to warm them up during the day. If your heating system is a forced air furnace, you should consider extending the cold air return ducts to the floor of the basement. This will create a ceiling-to-floor airflow, which results in even heating. Alternately, if the airflow problem is only minor, then one option is to put in booster fans in your existing ducts to improve airflow.

Finally, lighting in a basement can be difficult project. It looks much better to have some natural light from an egress window or egress basement walk out. Some ways to do this are extending basement windows lower. The most cost efective way is to install recessed lighting.

Also, a quick note on basement soundproofing: There are three ideas that can help. These are resilient insulation that can be added to your basement ceiling, 2x4 stud staggering in specific walls, and special acoustic caulking to seal drywall to the framing joints of your basement walls. Studs in a non load bearing wall may be notched up to 40% of the basement stud width in Fairfax County. All studs shall be installed on 16" or 24 " centers in Prince Wiiliam, Fairfax, Arrington, And Loudoun Counties if they are to be built to the typical finished basment detail.

When framing a basemnt make sure the base plate is presure trated this is the code in Fairfax County, Prince William County, Arington county, and Alexandria county. There are many mechanical requirments in most of Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia county mechanical requirment codes state that furnaces and water heaters must be accessible without removing petmanent construction. and shall meet the following minimum criteria: 30" x 30" clear floor space at front of furnace control area. The door to a furnace room in Fairfax County must be 24" minimum and be sufficient to remove the largest appliance housed in the area.