Planning for the Basement Renovation

We bought this house specifically because it had a massive basement that could become a rental apartment (in addition to other fabulous things like the yard and layout upstairs). Making the basement into an apartment is our next priority, so that the rental income can finance other important things, like installing air conditioning and paying off student loans. Unfortunately, it's a mess and needs a lot of work.

 This is the main living area and the front door. It's a huge space. Unfortunately, it comes with a thick wall-to-wall carpet that stinks. It seems like the previous owner's cat enjoyed the room and there is a leak, so the whole thing smells like cats and mold. Below is the bar, also in the main room, that comes with light-up glass block pillars. Yeah. We want to turn this front room into the main living area, with a kitchen, living room and dining table.

This is the bathroom. It's dingy and ugly and lined in cedar planks, for reasons that are unclear. It is a good size and layout though, so if we just update it and lighten it up, it should be nice.   

Below is what used to be a kitchen, and is now our laundry area. It's in the back of the house and the area we want to make into a bedroom. To make this a stand-alone apartment, we need to move the laundry upstairs for us. This is fabulous because it means no carrying laundry up and down two flights of stairs, but not fabulous because it means we have to get pipes installed where they currently are not.

We don't want to lose the entire basement, so we're planning to block off the staircase to keep the area under the stairs accessible to us for storage.

To be a little clearer: here is a floorplan of what the basement looks like now:

And here is a floorplan of what we want: 

To do this, we need to move laundry upstairs. We can't do the whole upstairs renovation yet, but we want to make sure we put the laundry in the place it will end up eventually. So here is the general plan for the whole second floor renovation, even though we'll just be doing a small piece now.

Current: (blue thing on top is the sleeping porch).

Here's the theory of the new master suite- we turn R's room into a bathroom and closet. His existing closet becomes the new laundry, accessible from the hall. We incorporate the sleeping porch into part bathroom, part office. We take down our existing closet to open up the bedroom into a much larger room. We add skylights to the master bedroom and bath for extra light. We also open up the current bathroom by taking out the tiny closet, moving the toilet over, adding a second sink and a tall cabinet.

To do the basement project, there are a few steps:

1. Demo ugly rug, bathroom and old kitchen.
2. Hire professionals to install hookups for new kitchen and upstairs washer/dryer.
3. Fix up bathroom, turn door.
4. Build new wall to block off steps and storage.
5. Build bedroom closet.
6. Install new sheetrock where needed and paint.
7. Install kitchen cabinets, counters & backsplash.
8. Install new floors.
9. Add kitchen appliances.

First step, we're reaching out to contractors to get some estimates and a general feedback on the projects.  My goal is to be done by the end of this summer. I'll let you know how it goes!