Basement refresh in Ann Arbor, MI

The basement this Ann Arbor home started with

The house sits on the west side of Ann Arbor, and the basement under it had been doing basement things for decades. Painted masonry walls, steel lally columns down the middle, a boiler in one corner, a workbench along the far wall and a laundry area tucked beside the stairs. Nothing was broken. It simply was not a room anybody wanted to spend time in.

The floor was the part everyone kept walking on. The slab had settled and scarred in patches, so nothing sat flat and nothing read as finished. Storage rooms had doors, the laundry had its corner, and the rest was one large open space the family used roughly the way you use a garage.

Estimator Will Sujek wrote the scope around that floor instead of around a floor plan. No studs, no soffits, no drop ceiling. The version with rooms in it is full basement finishing, and it costs several times this. The question here was narrower: what does it take to make the space that already exists worth standing in?

What went into this Ann Arbor basement refresh

Three phases, in order, across seven working days on site. Demolition first, then the concrete, then the finishes. Project manager Nick Neddo ran selections with the owners over two meetings in July and August, so the flooring was chosen and staged before the crew arrived. That sequencing is not improvisation. It is how our projects run.

Getting the slab flat before anything went down

Concrete repair was the single largest line on the estimate at roughly $4,300 with materials, and it is the line homeowners least expect. The crew cleaned and prepared the existing surface, cut out debris and imperfections, then worked leveling material across the low spots until the whole slab read flat.

Skipping that step is how a floating floor starts clicking and flexing underfoot two winters later. Vinyl plank is forgiving about moisture below grade and unforgiving about a slab that moves. If the floor in your own basement has cracked or dropped, that is floor repair before it is flooring.

Why the ceiling got sprayed instead of covered

A drop ceiling eats six to eight inches of head height, and this basement had none to give. Foreman Robert Knick masked the room, then sprayed two coats of black Dryfall across the joists, ductwork, wiring and the underside of the subfloor, with fans running to pull the drying along and a check for drips between coats.

Black does something white cannot. The eye stops reading the overhead clutter as clutter and starts reading it as one dark plane, which makes a low room feel taller than the tape measure says. It is also the least expensive ceiling available down there. Weigh it against the other basement ceiling options before you commit, and note that the same crew handles interior painting upstairs.

The one thing the house added mid-project

Nothing in a basement this age stays exactly on paper. One change order came out of this project, written up and signed before any of that work started.

The main lally column carrying the center beam was replaced, at about $2,600. It is the kind of item you only find once the slab is bare and you can see what is actually holding the house up, and it is the entire distance between the signed contract and the final invoice.

All of that difference sits on a change order the owners approved in advance. Nothing arrived after the fact. If the number matters to how you plan, financing is available, and the basement finishing cost calculator will put you in the right range before you call anyone.

How the finished basement turned out

The floor runs unbroken from the stair landing to the far wall, a light oak tone plank that reads warm against the painted block. Underlayment went down first, then the planks locked together over it, with transitions cut in at the doorways and edges scribed to the walls. Choosing the right product for below grade is most of the battle in basement flooring.

Overhead, the black ceiling recedes. Every pipe, duct and joist sits where it always did, and none of it pulls the eye anymore. The original built-in wood shelving along the stair wall stayed put, which keeps the room tied to the house it belongs to rather than looking like a showroom dropped below grade.

Robert walked the finished space with the homeowner on the last afternoon, checked the room end to end and closed the job with nothing outstanding. First swing of demolition to final sweep: seven working days.

For other answers to the same problem, look at a basement refinish in Ypsilanti where the walls did get rebuilt, an Ann Arbor basement darkroom that turned a corner into a working room, or a Ypsilanti basement remodel built to a full floor plan.

Not every basement needs a floor plan. If yours is dry, structurally sound and simply unpleasant to be in, the fix may sit closer to this project than to a full build-out, and it may land in the same range as a mid-size bathroom. Here is the wider picture on refinishing a basement in Ann Arbor.

See more of our work in the featured projects gallery, read what we have built across Ann Arbor, or book a free consultation and we will scope your basement with you. Contact us now for a free quote.