If your home does not have a basement...

do you wish you had one?

If you don't have one, how do you make storage work? Is it really that necessary to have a basement?

I found a wonderful neighborhood...but man, it seems like these awesome houses are without basements. Yet, they have tons of rooms (one house had 6 bedrooms!).

So, how is basement-free living?

TIA

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

no, we don't have a basement and i don't miss it at all.

i in fact HATE BASEMENTS!! they creep me out more than anything, and its nice not to worry about any floods.

for storage we now have a garage.. but for a few years we had neither and we managed.
we used our eaves, and shed.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

Love basements but so long as I have ample space in the rest of the house and esp. storage space, then I'm good.

My house here in NY has 5 brs and 3 baths with tons of attic, closet and garage space.. so I don't really miss the basement kwim?

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

I used to not care about a basement, until I had one.

Now the basement is a must have. The only way I buy a house without a basement is if I can look out my window and see WATER.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

DH refused to even look at houses with basements! We've heard too many stories about floods etc..would I love it for the extra space, yah..We have a small one thats not fully underground now that we're going to finish up and make an office but we have a two car garage and a stand up attic that works well for us

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

we dont have a basement and i dont really miss it. when we were house hunting, we only looked at houses with finished basements. unfinished basements give me the creeps. but i do like having the laundry room on the first floor. we have a ton of closets and a big shed in the yard that make up for the lack of basement.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

I love having a basement but they really do give me the creeps. If you have sufficent closet space or even a crawl space in your home, I think you'd be fine.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

Never lived with one, don't have one. WISHED I had one now.

I would only buy a house now with a basement.

We do have a garage that we use for storage.

Essentially living basement free means NO CLUTTER AT ALL. You just don't have the room.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

Right now we don't have one. We use the attic and the huge shed for storage.
Has worked for us for the last 6+ yrs. I'm fine without.
But DH wanted for in the new house.
Not for storage, just so he has "his space".

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We dont have a basement. I always had one growing up and said I wouldnt buy a house without one. I don't miss it. Our garage is big enough and we have good attic space.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

A basement was a must have for us! We don't even use it for storage... We have an office, a huge playroom, huge laundry room with pantry and some storage, an exercise room with some storage, and the boiler room. Most of our storage is in the 2 car garage and attic.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

Neither DH or I had a basement growing up and it never really bothered us. But we are really tight on storage space and it sure would come in handy. My parents had a huge attic, so that was perfect for extra space. In our house, we have eave space that we store everything in and they are packed right now with baby stuff. DS #2 is our last, so once we are done with his baby stuff and can get rid of it that will clear out a lot of space.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

I hate basements. We tried very hard to find a house that did not have the laundry in the basement. Our house has a partial basement that is partially above ground but the laundry is down there. We simply could not find the right house with laundry on the main or upper level & I don't think there is a good place to move it. I like having some storage there but I would not miss it too much. I believe that the partially above ground basements are less likely to have mold and are better for people with allergies.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We have a home without a basement. It's fine. Neither DH nor I have ever had a basement in our lives (he's from California where they're non-existent and I'm from NYC) so I guess we don't know what we're missing. We have an attached 1.5 car garage that we use for storage, plus there's 3 bedrooms here for just the two of us. So we don't feel crowded by our stuff.

I guess a basement would be nice for the extra storage space, but like I said, we've always lived our lives without one so we know how to.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We don't have a full basement- we have a crawl basement where we could put stuff if desperate. But we have a garage and a very generous attic-type crawlspace. I did not grow up with a basement so I don't miss it.

In fact, if we had a basement, I have a feeling that would make me feel like I could hold on to more stuff- as it is, the garage and attic are STUFFED with things we don't need, which we are working on getting rid of.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

I use the basement for all of my tools and my projects, so I really have to have a basement. If I had a garage, I could make it work as a shop, but my cars would always be in the garage, so I couldn't be mid-project for very long.

I would never look at a new house without a basement.

BTW, we have relatively little "stuff" in the basement. We don't store a whole lot of things down there. It's mostly functional space. Weight room, workshop, laundry area. I don't like storing large amounts of stuff (except for Christmas ornaments and stuff for the holidays).

Message edited 3/16/2011 7:45:25 AM.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We have what is technically a basement, but it is completely finished living space for us-- playroom/family room, small bedroom/office, full bath (stall shower), but our laundry room is down there as well. The only real storage we have down there is a closet we are ripping out to turn into a "mud room" area, since it's right off the garage and will be a better use of space for us.The way our house is situated, it's at ground level in the back of the house, and walks out onto our patio.

i was worried about not having any basement storage-- but we have a large garage, and an attic (even though we plan on doing a second level at some point). Then I thought about it-- after I am done with the baby stage of having kids, and don't need to store things like the swing, etc.-- then who needs TONS of storage when you have closets and rooms throughout your house to keep stuff (vs apt living). The more room you have to store crap, the more crap you have!!!

Message edited 3/16/2011 8:02:18 AM.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We don't have a basement....but we have a split s the 1st level is like a basement. we have a luandry room, pantry, den area and DH is in the process of making part his "man cave"

we have a crawlspace and attic for storage

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We live in Richmond and there are very few homes with a basement in this area. So, we don't have one.

We don't miss it at all. Our attic was finished and we have a third floor with another den and a pretty big storage room. We also have a laundry room on the second floor. It is really nice to not have to lug my laundry down to the dark basement like I did in my old house!

As long as you have plenty of storage and a good place to put your washer/dryer, you should be fine!

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

I do miss having a basement, BUT it makes us more aware of what junk we keep around since we don't have a lot of space.

We do have a double garage, and keeping that in order is a process itself.

Message edited 3/16/2011 9:00:16 AM.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We just have a dirt cellar that we wouldn't use for storage. It just houses our boiler and water heater. I didn't grow up with a basement so it was never a concern when house-hunting. I do like to have a large attic but we added central air and kind of lost most of our attic too.

What we do have is a converted garage. The top is a loft where we store all our seasonal stuff. The front is like a tool shed where we have our lawnmower, etc. and my DH just built a large cedar closet in the main part of the garage, which is like a rec room.

Our house is +100 years old and we don't have closets in every room but we have learned to be creative with storage and space.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We never had a basement growing up on LI and don't have one now. We live in FL so there aren't basements here at all, but we do have a garage. DH put up shelving for storage and we have everything we don't use often in there but do use or will use again in the future (big bins of baby stuff, some house stuff, tools, etc). We don't keep anything we have no use for... we donate a lot so the garage doesn't get packed with stuff. We also have a huge attic that we don't even use!

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We would never buy a house without one.

First for the storage potential, second for the extra living space should you need it, third DH has his "work bench" there, and last is the access to all the pipes and such for the main floor, having a basement makes it easier to run new wiring, fix leaks, etc.

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

We don't have a basement, but we have a huge attic and garage that make up for storage. I don't miss the basement at all, especially when there are heavy rains and people complain about their basements flooding. We bought our house because it was a great location with great schools. Good luck!

Re: If your home does not have a basement...

YES!

Especially since I grew up having one, I really do miss it! We need more storage!