Home / Services / Basement finishing
Improve · Utah County
Bedrooms, bathrooms, theaters, gyms, and the code work nobody advertises: egress, ceiling height, moving mechanical runs, and keeping water out. Danny Bird has been building since 2001.
Why this one is different
You already own the hole, the walls, the floor, and the roof. Nobody is pouring a new foundation or framing a new box. That is why finishing a basement usually costs a fraction of building the same rooms above ground.
What decides the real number is everything you did not choose. How tall the ceiling is once the ductwork is accounted for. Whether the bedroom you want has a legal way out. Where the furnace trunk line runs and whether it has to move. Whether the walls have ever been wet.
Those four answers exist before you hire anyone. A good bid finds them in the first walkthrough. A bad one finds them at inspection, which is where basement projects turn into arguments.
Before the first stud goes up
Ask about all four before you sign anything, with any builder. The answers change the price and sometimes change the plan.
Every basement bedroom needs an emergency escape and rescue opening: a window with roughly five to six square feet of real clear opening, at least 20 inches wide and 24 inches tall, with the sill no more than 44 inches off the floor. If your basement does not have one, it means cutting the concrete foundation wall and setting a window well, usually at least nine square feet with a 36 inch projection, and a permanent ladder if the well is deeper than 44 inches. That is real money and it is not optional.
Habitable space needs about seven feet of finished ceiling, with beams, ducts, and girders allowed to hang a little lower. Measure from the finished floor you plan to install, not the bare slab, and measure under the lowest duct rather than in the middle of the room. A basement that measures seven feet flat today loses height the moment flooring and drywall go in.
Furnace trunk lines, drain lines, and the main beam do not care about your floor plan. Some of it gets boxed into a soffit, some of it gets rerouted, and rerouting costs more but buys back headroom and a cleaner ceiling. The furnace and water heater also need their clearances and combustion air kept clear, which quietly sets where the mechanical room walls can go.
Finish over a basement that leaks and you have built an expensive problem you can no longer see. Chalky white staining on the concrete, dark lines at the wall and floor joint, or a musty smell are all worth chasing down before framing. Most of the fix is outside: grading that falls away from the house and downspouts that discharge well clear of the foundation.
Scope
Framed, insulated, wired, and egressed properly, so they count as bedrooms to a building inspector and to an appraiser rather than being called bonus rooms.
New drains below a slab mean cutting and repouring concrete, which is normal work and needs to be in the bid from day one. Where a stub-out already exists, the job gets a lot simpler.
A bar with a sink, fridge, and dishwasher is usually straightforward. A full second kitchen is a zoning question, not a building one. See the note below.
Wiring, lighting, and sound isolation designed in at framing. Retrofitting quiet into a finished room costs several times what it costs to build it in.
Floor build-up, ceiling height, and impact noise are the whole conversation. Dropping weights above a bedroom is a framing and isolation problem, not a flooring problem.
The unglamorous half of the plan. Cold storage, the mechanical room, and getting to the shutoffs and filters without moving furniture.
The parts most bids skip
This is a zoning question and each Utah County city answers it differently. A stove and oven downstairs, especially with a separate entrance, is what makes a city start asking whether you are building an accessory dwelling unit. A wet bar with a sink, fridge, microwave, and dishwasher usually is not. Ask before you draw it, because the answer changes the plan and can change your property taxes.
The complaint after almost every basement job is noise through the floor. The cheap fixes happen while the joists are open: insulation in the bays, a second layer of drywall or resilient channel under the loudest rooms, solid core doors, and keeping the mechanical room from opening straight into the family room.
Radon comes up out of the soil and collects in basements, and plenty of Utah homes test high. A test kit costs almost nothing. If the number comes back high, the mitigation system is far cheaper to install before you cover the slab and the rim joist than after.
The right answer is your builder. A finished basement is inspected in stages: framing, then electrical, plumbing, and mechanical rough-ins, then insulation, then drywall, then final. Unpermitted finished square footage is a problem you inherit at resale, when a buyer's appraiser will not count it.
Recent work
Questions
Related
Whole-home renovations, additions, and structural work. See a full before and after set.
Covered patios, decks, and outdoor kitchens, plus the grading and drainage that keep water away from the basement.
A real line-item budget for the basement you are describing, before you commit to it.
Building new instead? Plan the lower level while it is still a drawing and it costs a fraction of finishing it later.
Where we work
Bring a sketch, a Pinterest board, or just a list of rooms. Danny walks it, measures the height, checks the egress, and puts one honest price in writing.
Or call or text (801) 735-7186