Basement Makeover
How one Peters couple turned a difficult basement space into a comfortable bar and recreation room.
|
|
|
Scott Rantovich in his newly remodeled basement.
|
What Scott and Dedra Rantovich wanted was a classy bar area where they could host friends and family, a cozy recreation room complete with entertainment center, and a patio out back where they could enjoy their sweeping view of Peters Township.
What they had was an unfinished basement.
With the help of Regis McQuaide and his company, Master Remodelers Inc., their dream room became a reality. Over the last few months, Scott and Dedra Rantovich have collaborated with the company to make the most of their underutilized space.
The Rantovich family (Scott, Dedra, their two children and puppy Charlie) has lived in the 16-year-old house for five years. The before version of the basement was a partially finished room the Rantoviches had packed with storage. Scott figured its lack of space limited it to nothing more. Though it served some purpose, the room just wasn’t what they were looking for.
“It just didn’t have a warm feeling,” Scott says.
A few meetings with McQuaide’s team revealed a wide range of options for optimizing the room.
“The space was really compartmentalized,” McQuaide says. “We wanted to make it more free.”
The process started with a list of what the Rantoviches wanted to see in their new area. Their ideas were great, but with only about 900 square-feet, most of which was blocked off by different walls, McQuaide admits his first reaction was, “Where are we going to put all this?” Some strategic drawings, reducing the size of an existing full bathroom to a small powder room and moving storage to the garage made their goal more attainable.
As McQuaide and his team drew up several concepts, the family tweaked the plans to make them reflect exactly what they wanted, while still being cost conscious. To get the best sense of the family’s goal for the space during this phase, McQuaide asks his clients what they want to achieve with the remodel, how they want to use the space, what they’ll put in it, how much they want to spend and why they want the change. The collaborative planning process took about three months and work officially started in May.
“It went very smooth, surprisingly smooth,” Scott says. “I went into it with this preconceived notion that I’d be dealing with a lot of issues. This is our first remodeling project and everyone was expecting the worst as far as a mess. But it all went so smooth. Regis warned me they’d be putting up drywall. They totally encapsulated the area and there was very little dust.”
“The secret behind minimum strain put on the family during construction is planning,” McQuaide says.
“When you plan everything out, the execution goes pretty smooth,” he says. “We’re a designing and building firm so we work with customers and understand their needs because we’ve been working on the plan from the beginning.”
When it came to selecting the more aesthetic aspects of the room, like lights and wall color, McQuaide’s design consultant narrowed down the choices before presenting the family with options. Otherwise, when things like catalogs and the Internet give clients literally endless options, the process of picking something as simple as carpet color can become “perplexing and frustrating,”McQuaide says.
“They showed us things and said, ‘I think this is what you’re looking for,’” Scott says. “They don’t just throw a book at you and say, ‘Pick one.’ We always had a pretty good starting point.”
“Shows like ”Trading Spaces” and ”Flip That House” are making more people think about remodeling,” McQuaide says, “but there is more to the rise in demand than just reality TV.”
“People just really want to redo their space. Older homes are getting modernized. There is a constant demand for the work we do,” he says.
The end result was a nice-sized recreation room with toffee-colored walls. The ceramic floor was replaced in areas with tile and tan carpet. A built-in maple entertainment center perfect for holding a television and stereo is the focus of the room perched in the left corner. Two white columns spaced evenly apart were added with a twofold purpose: support and décor.
The barroom has a microwave, a refrigerator and a wine refrigerator below wood and glass cupboards. A four-chair bar separates the room from a small café table sitting by the window. New French doors lead to a back patio below the home’s white deck.
“It really is precisely what we were thinking about,” Scott says. “We do a lot of entertaining. This will be great for that.”
The positive experience and pleasing results has made the once-skeptical Scott consider updating other areas of his home in the future.
“There are definitely things to think about now that we’ve seen how easy it is,” he says. “When you visualize something, you are able to accomplish it.” •
|
