When Can Finishing A Basement HURT Your Home Value? TAGS: basement | basement egress windows | basement remodel ideas | Egress windows | finishing a basement | means of egress | Refinishing your basement

Finishing your basement will increase the value of your home, right? Not if you don’t do it right. With the housing market on the road to recovery, a lot of homeowners are looking to see how they can leap-frog the competition and get their houses back to full market value as quickly as possible. Finishing any available basement space is a smart way to do just that. Just think about it – creating a basement apartment, or just extra livable space in a basement, can easily add hundreds of square feet to a home’s footprint; and offer great options for …Continue reading →

Basement Window Well Adds To Inheritance TAGS: basement | basement remodel ideas | building codes | Egress windows | finishing a basement | Installing an Egress Window

Investing in a basement window well is one way to look after your loved ones. 2008 was a rough year for a lot of Americans – but for Dave Buchanan, it was harder than most. That was the year he was due to retire, and unfortunately cashing in his 401k coincided with one of the worst stock market crashes in American history. “I ended up getting less out of my 401k than what I’d paid into it,” Dave explains. “I was gutted.” Fortunately, Dave’s canny financial planning meant that he and his wife weren’t reduced to eating Ramen noodles as …Continue reading →

10% Off Sale on all St. Paul items TAGS: basement remodel ideas | Egress windows | finishing a basement | means of egress

For the entire month of May receive 10% off the entire line of St. Paul products.  Including all StoneWall Egress Kits, StoneWall Egress Wells, Safe-T-View Covers, and Life Step Egress Ladders.   Start shopping here – 10% Off St. Paul Tweet

Make the Most of Your Basement: The Darkroom TAGS: Adding egress windows | basement remodel ideas | building codes | Egress windows | emergeny escape | finishing a basement | Refinishing your basement

Fashion photographer Danny turned his unfinished basement into a darkroom – and added a basement window well for several important reasons. “Film photography isn’t dead,” explains Danny Patterson, a fashion photographer from New Jersey. “It’s still a medium used in high art, and a lot of fashion magazines still love the look of a photograph taken on real 35mm film.” But Danny, who specializes in photographs taken on real film, admits that the digital revolution has changed a lot of things. “Everything that used to be commonplace has got more difficult to get hold of now, though,” he admits. “You …Continue reading →

The Home Gym: Making the Most of Your Basement Space TAGS: basement | basement egress windows | basement remodel ideas | building codes | finishing a basement | means of egress | Refinishing your basement

One popular way to maximize the space of a finished basement is to convert it into a home gym. While the initial outlay can be expensive, it’s one of the few investments that literally “pays for itself” in the gym dues you save every month – not to mention your improved health! Home exercise equipment tends not to get a lot of use. Some people even joke “it’s the most expensive clothesline you’ll ever have!” This is largely because home exercise equipment is large, bulky and needs a lot of room to use it effectively. Which is where a basement …Continue reading →

A Basement Game Room: Making the Most of Your Space TAGS: basement | basement remodel ideas | Egress windows | finishing a basement | Refinishing your basement | Sunlight into a basement

A basement game room is a popular use of your additional lower-level space. Here are some pointers: For President Truman’s birthday in 1947, a bowling alley was installed in the basement of the White House, under the North Portico. That started the American tradition of basement game rooms – which continues to this day. In many ways, a game room is one of the best uses of finished basement space. Because basements tend to have large areas of open space, it allows for easy installation of a pool table (or even a bowling alley) that wouldn’t fit upstairs. You can …Continue reading →

Flatscreen or Projector? The Basement Home Theater Dilemma TAGS: basement remodel ideas | Egress windows | finishing a basement | Refinishing your basement

One of the advantages of a basement home theater is the ability to completely control the lighting; for a true cinema-like experience. But that creates another problem; do you stick with flatscreen technology, or really take advantage and invest in a projector? Projectors used to be exclusively found in boardrooms, classrooms and movie theaters – but now they’re making a big impact at home. Projecting a tiny image onto a blank wall, blowing it up in the process, they offer home cinema enthusiasts a true “big screen” experience. But many people still prefer to stick with more traditional technology, like …Continue reading →

Basement Room Ideas: Making the Most of Your Space TAGS: basement egress windows | basement remodel ideas | Egress windows | finishing a basement | Refinishing your basement

Over the course of the next few blog posts, we’ll be examining some of the best ways to expand your home and make use of your available basement space. In our first post: Finishing your basement to be a fully-featured media room, home theater or family room. Whether grabbing popcorn for the big movie, or hot dogs for the big game, one popular venue is a basement media room. It’s an increasingly popular use for finished basement space. In many ways, a basement is the perfect space for installing a big-screen TV – one of the few places in the …Continue reading →

Finish a Basement Apartment Safely with Egress Window Wells TAGS: basement | basement egress windows | Basement Windows | Egress windows | emergeny escape | finishing a basement | means of egress

To finish a basement apartment safely includes having a “means of egress” – a building code requirement that calls for an easy escape in the event of an emergency. But don’t look at your window wells as an obligation – think of the opportunities they could offer instead. Egress window wells are not just a building code requirement – they offer a number of additional benefits that can help make a basement apartment much more enjoyable. When you’re planning to install your basement window wells, consider the advantages of the different rooms you could install them in: Kitchen: There are …Continue reading →

Installing an Egress Window? We Take the Guesswork Out TAGS: Adding egress windows | basement egress windows | building codes | Egress windows | finishing a basement

If you’re thinking of installing an egress window in your home, we can help you get everything you need with a single click. Last Christmas, I bought a new iPhone, and a whole load of accessories that were on sale. And what did I discover when I got home? That none of the on-sale accessories worked with this season’s latest iPhone. It’s a perennial problem – making sure the accessories and extras you buy fit the product you intend them for – and it extends far beyond just mobile phones. It even extends to home construction supplies (I can’t be …Continue reading →