Cellar Conversion - Anyone done this and is it expensive?

[Flowertop]

Hi we are about to exchange contracts on a house which has a cellar outside but does not lead from the house - IYSWIM! Anyway I would love to turn the cellar into a playroom for my DS's and when they are older a sort of 'teen' den - so they don't junk the house. I am interested to know if anyone has converted their cellar into a useable room, what this involves and what are we looking to pay roughly. I have no idea about cost.

[Bibis]

We made our basement rooms habitable.

This meant that we had to dig down slightly as they were too low, we underpinned party wall and had upstands around other walls. Windows were made bigger, damp proofed it(didn't work first time so had to sue damp proofers and architect which worked in our favour).

We also put in a shower room with loo, needed a saniflo as had to pump yukky stuff up to soil stack .

In the end we had two sumps put in to remove water, which worked (like enormous dustbins under floor which pump water out into drains).

Did all this about 8 years ago and cost around £30k then (got a lot of it back due to litigation).

Well worth it and really enhanced house.

HTH

[KTeePee]

We had our cellar made watertight (but it was fairly dry to start with). Didn't get the floors lowered (it is just about ok for us) and no windows or pumps involved. Just had the walls lined and plastered, floor made watertight, ceiling put up. some lighting installed. Technically it could only be described as a store room if we ever came to sell but we use it as an office as well. (And occasionally a spare bedroom!) I have seen similar conversions used as playrooms and ours would be great as a den for teenagers in years to come...

[Flowertop]

Thanks for your replies. KTeePee would you mind me asking what you approx. would pay for the work you had done. It does sound as this is what we will need as ceiling height is fine and we will just have to replace windows.

[joash]

Very expensive - but having it done properly is worth it in the end (so I'm told from 3 relly's and 1 friend who had it done).

[MrsSpoon]

Yes, we've had this done too, cost about 30k and DH did some of the work himself. We had to have a pump as apparently there is a natural underground stream in the area and it runs (or it ran) straight through our cellar. As we speak I am sitting in the cellar just now, it consists of an office, TV room/guitar room/DH's den, pool room, gym area, bar, storage and eventually there will be a toilet, although it will need a saniflo type pump.

[MrsSpoon]

Our's was started about three and a half years ago and is still not 100% finished (see note about DH doing some of the work himself ).

[MrsSpoon]

Oh, digging down and underpinning required here too.

[IsabelWatchingItRainInMacondo]

40,000 I would say, depending in how a complex work do you want.

[KTeePee]

Ours only cost about £2k about 5 years ago - but like I said, there was no digging down, underpinning, etc - those are the expensive things. Because our was fairly dry to start with it was really just a question of plasterboarding the walls and ceiling and damp-proofing the floor. HTH!

[Kaloo20]

How strange, I posted a very simlar request in the Property section a few days ago.

I believe it will cost about £1K per cubic meter (according to basement conversion sites) to get the cellar lined, power and lighting installed and made into an empty shell ready for fit out.

[Flowertop]

Thanks again for all your posts. Can you please provide a link or web address for the conversion web site Kaloo20.