Really basic cellar conversion - advice!

[liverpoolbell]

Hello all - apologies for a long post

We are about to complete on our first home and are making a (rather long...) list of things we want to do to the house. First on the list is to knock through living dining room (Victorian terrace, front and back room) and to gut and fit a new kitchen. These we have organised and budgeted for.

In the cellar there is a decent sized room (size of the living room) with a separate tiny room (around the size of a downstairs loo) at the bottom of the stairs. Currently it is completely bare (exposed beams and joists, concrete floor, brick walls). Has anyone done a really minimal conversion to a similar cellar, i.e. new floor and plasterboard walls, and had any plumbing works done? Ideally we'd like a toilet in the little room, and a small utility with washing machine, dryer, sink etc in the bigger room, in addition to some storage shelves. It doesn't have to be pretty, just functional!

So - if anyone has done something similar on a tight budget, do you have any recommendations or rough quotes? We are in the North West.

Thanks in advance

Having lived in three houses,with cellars in Belgium, and having one in my home in the UK, I wouldn't bother with plasterboarding the walls. It's a cellar.

It is a complete PITA taking your washing down and back up, as I have to currently, and our steps are worn as they are 200 years old. I'm looking forward to coming home and having my utility room on the ground floor.

Is the cellar tanked? All the cellars in the houses we've lived in, in Belgium have had some form of damp, so cardboard and plastic can rot, and you have an issue when you pick up a case of wine!! I have to keep all washing powders and tablets well sealed, or the damp gets to them as well. The current rental is 250 years old roughly, so although the cellar is tanked, there are other issues. In the last house, (1920s, but renovated within the last decade), even though the cellar looked pristine, there were still issues with damp. I think you need to get the ventilation right and the damp under control before you do anything else.

It might be an idea to live with it for a couple of months and see if there any obvious issues before you start spending money on it.

Hi scaryteacher - thanks for taking the time to reply. Since posting we have come to the same conclusion and are now thinking of creating a laundry room on the first floor (washing from bedroom - laundry - bedroom without stairs!). As we are in the NW we will probably have very few line days per year so happy to carry washing downstairs on those few occasions.

Cellar use now open to suggestions...my vote is for wine cellar but will have to convince DP!

Thanks again

Cellar use now open to suggestions

You'll fill it up with general storage - paint cans, brushes, ladders etc but be careful to keep things off the ground and away from walls to minimize the damp.

Don't keep fabric or paper down there.

I had basic dry lining and plasterboard walls done in my cellar. Use it as a utility, toilet and storage.
Was easy to install utilities but as it is below ground level have saniflow units to pump waste water.
I love having this space being so useful, personally wouldn't want to 'waste' an upstairs room as a utility room.

I find for decisions about how best to use space in a house it is good if possible to live there for a bit and then you can get a better sense of what will work best for you.

The other cellar tips are that is is by its nature damp so we have a dehumidifier down there, and a sump pump for just in case, which prevented water damage when a neighbor had a burst pipe and leak in their cellar.

Another poster in Belgium here, but with the complete opposite experience to scaryteacher. My 1970's house has a massive cellar where the boiler is, plus a separate room. It's not at all damp, as there are 2 vents to the outside, plus a small window on the stairs down which I keep open most of the time (apart from winter).

We use the smaller room as as storage room - spare shoes, suitcases, extra fridge, wine, etc. The larger room has the boiler in it (which is huge as it's oil-fired), and also the washing machine and tumbler dryer. I have washing lines hung from the ceiling so that I can dry washing down there when the weather's rubbish. I find that the heat from the tumble dryer, plus the vent to the outside really help dry clothes out. As a family of 5, I have no idea where I'd dry all our stuff in winter if I didn't have the space! And it really doesn't bug me having to walk downstairs with the washing, as it's all out of the way.

I second the recommendation that you don't need to plasterboard or do much with the floor. Ours has concrete slab floors, and the walls are just painted white with normal cellar/exterior paint. We bough some metal shelving in Ikea and our local B&Q type place to use as storage and it's fine.

Is it definitely a cellar? I.e. no natural light?

I'd say storage if so.

Hello all - many thanks for your comments and advice.

bumpertobumper - sounds like a great conversion, that's what we initially had in mind! However we have (rather unusually) two fairly good sized bathrooms upstairs so easy to convert one into a 'loo-tility' without wasting a room.

amyboo - storage will definitely come into play - the loft has been converted so not a huge amount of storage space up there. We already have some metal shelving (sounds similar to what you have) which will most likely end up in the cellar (and we may even get more).

Minnie - nope, no natural light. Definitely a cellar!

Thanks for comments! Probably won't bother with the walls and floors - might just replace the hideous fluorescent strip light...

Amyboo, Depends where you live and when the house was built. The first house was not very cleverly built purely for the rental market in Tervuren.

The second was a private home let out whilst the owners were abroad, and the third is a period property which doesn't in any way, shape or form, adhere to modern build standards. I couldn't dry washing in the cellar in any of them, and in the third, the clothes would get covered with dust from the brick barrel arched ceilings!

The cellar in my home in Cornwall gets damp, so we have a dehumidifier running and it is well aired via a massive airbrick over what used to be the hole the coal came through.

Unless they are very competently tanked, damp will get in one way or the other.

I am in contact with the family taking over house #1, as it's still an MOD let, and the cellar is still a problem, even though we regularly flagged it with both the landlord and the SHAPE maintenance team.

OP You might find wooden shelves better than metal ones, as they can rust. We had wooden shelves in all the cellars and they still seem OK.