Basement finishing in Lewisburg, PA
A playroom built for the whole family.
A Superior Walls basement in Lewisburg finished into a playroom, built-in bookshelves and a half bath — with a drain moved to put the bathroom where the family actually wanted it, and the radon system kept reachable behind the walls.
About a year before this project, we’d finished a basement for relatives of these homeowners. They were happy enough with the work to send their family our way, and that’s how we ended up in another Lewisburg basement.
This family wanted to give their daughter a place of her own to play without toys taking over the rest of the house. They’re readers, so built-in bookshelves were part of the plan from the beginning. A half bathroom meant nobody had to run upstairs.
The basement was a good starting point: completely unfinished, a Superior Walls foundation, and drains already roughed in under the slab. But the homeowners had a few concerns that mattered as much as how it would look.
Planning for moisture and radon before closing the walls.
Dampness was high on the list. They wanted a finished basement they could enjoy without wondering what was happening behind the drywall.
One small thing we built in was a discreet drain connection for their dehumidifier. Instead of remembering to empty a bucket every few days, they leave it running and it drains on its own. Nobody notices it in a photo. It makes the space easier to live with for years.
Radon was a bigger concern. One of the homeowners works in the medical field and pays close attention to the house’s radon levels. They already had a mitigation system, and finishing the basement couldn’t make it hard to monitor. So we built a concealed access panel that keeps the monitoring point reachable without an obvious utility opening in a finished room.
Mechanical equipment, cleanouts, valves and monitoring devices don’t stop needing attention because somebody wants drywall over them. We think about that on every basement.
Roughed in doesn’t mean roughed in where you want it.
The Superior Walls foundation and the drains under the slab gave us a head start. But the existing drain locations didn’t line up with the bathroom this family wanted.
So we saw-cut the concrete floor and moved one of the drains to suit the layout. It’s a good example of why a plumbing rough-in doesn’t lock you into the bathroom somebody else imagined. Sometimes it makes more sense to move a drain during construction than to spend twenty years with a bathroom in the wrong place.
A pocket door on the half bath did the rest: a full-size bathroom door swinging into a small room would have eaten the floor space the room was built to give back.
When our framing contractor got hurt.
About a week before framing was scheduled to start, our framing contractor fell from a ladder and was seriously injured. First and foremost, we were worried about him.
We also had a project scheduled, trades lined up behind framing, and homeowners expecting us to keep things moving. A delay at that stage pushes everything after it: electrical, plumbing, drywall, finishes.
We brought in another crew and kept the original schedule. The homeowners didn’t have to start calling around for a framer or reorganize the job themselves. That’s part of what you’re paying a general contractor for. When something changes, finding the way forward is our responsibility, not yours.
By the time we wrapped up, the family had a basement designed around how they wanted to use it. Their daughter had her own play space, the books had a proper home, and the half bath made the downstairs convenient.
Behind the walls, the dehumidifier drains itself and the radon system stays reachable. The project finished within the $70,000–$80,000 range we planned, on schedule, despite the framing setback. There’s nothing dramatic about the finished result. That’s a good thing.
“Mike and his crew did a BEAUTIFUL job on our basement and bathroom! Everything was planned, scheduled, and on time and exactly on budget (to the cent). His contractors and colleagues were the consummate professionals. Highly highly recommend!!”
Let’s see if this makes sense.
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.