342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
Free measure and a scale drawing, drainage and a vapor barrier before any framing, and the permit filed by us rather than by you.
Basement remodeling in Lancaster leaves you another floor of the house, dry in March, warm in January, and lived in the rest of the year.
Lancaster Basement Pros is a basement remodeling contractor in Lancaster, finishing about thirty basements a year since 2009 and traveling out to Lititz, Ephrata and Mount Joy. Two crews run at once, and the book sits four to six weeks ahead.
Most of it is full basement finishing, bare block through to painted rooms and a signed permit. Under that comes waterproofing and moisture control, then egress and code compliance, basement bathrooms and bars, and apartments and in-law suites.
Walls go up in 20-gauge steel an inch clear of the block, closed-cell foam behind them as the Class II vapor retarder, so no wood sits on masonry and a damp spring never shows as a stain on your paint.
Is one room downstairs too small a job for basement remodeling? Basement remodeling that size is a normal booking, and a landlord in Columbia wanting a code bedroom and a shower room is a fortnight, while a suite, a bar and a theater for a family runs most of a summer.
Ask Lancaster Basement Pros for a free measure at (717) 555-0162, for basement remodeling in Lancaster, Lititz, Ephrata and Mount Joy. Somebody comes out, measures the height and the water, and the drawing is yours either way.
Curt and Anita Hershey
Founders and owners
Who we are
We have been finishing basements in Lancaster and the county around it since 2009, about thirty a year. Seventeen years down there, and the work still comes down to dealing with the water before a stud goes up.
Two crews, one contract from bare block to a signed permit. We file the drawings with your township and stand with the inspector, and the steel stands an inch clear of the block so no wood sits on masonry.
Services
For the family in a split level that has run out of bedrooms and does not want to move, and for the owner of a ranch who is tired of a whole floor of the house being used as a shed. This is the finish itself rather than the water underneath it or the plumbing in it. Framing, insulation, floor, ceiling and lighting, done in a way that keeps the head height you actually have.
Learn more about Full Basement Finishing
For the owner who has mopped the same corner every March since they moved in, and for the buyer whose inspection report has water infiltration written on it in a house they still want. This is the half that goes in before any framing. Where the water arrives, where it gets sent, and what keeps the air down there dry once it has gone.
Learn more about Waterproofing and Moisture Control
For anybody who has been told the room downstairs does not count. A family adding a bedroom for a teenager, a landlord with a basement room let out, somebody selling a house where the finished basement was never filed. People pick this because the window is the one part of a basement nobody can talk their way around. It either measures or it does not.
Learn more about Egress and Code Compliance
For anybody who wants a bathroom or a bar downstairs and has been told it is complicated. Families finishing a basement so nobody has to run up two flights, and owners who found a rough-in in the slab and never knew what it was for. People pick this because the plumbing is the part that decides whether the room happens at all.
Learn more about Basement Bathrooms and Bars
For anybody turning a basement into somewhere separate rather than into another room. Families moving a parent in and wanting them independent, owners making a unit out of a dead floor, and people who want a theater nobody upstairs can hear. They pick this because the separation is the difficult half and everything else down there is ordinary building.
Learn more about Apartments and In-Law SuitesSteel framing, closed-cell foam on the block, and the wet dealt with before a single stud is stood up.
Walls go up in 20-gauge galvanized steel on a treated bottom track, set an inch clear of the masonry, and that inch is what stops a wet spring showing up later as a stain on your paint.
Two inches of closed-cell foam goes on the block behind the studs, which is both the insulation and the vapor retarder, so the climate zone this county sits in is answered by foam rather than by poly over fiberglass.
Under the floor comes first. Drainage, a sealed pit and a barrier are finished and running before framing starts, because everything above them is only as good as the thing they were built on. Rough-in is inspected with the walls open, and access panels go in at every shutoff and clean-out.
Call and somebody comes out, measures the basement and writes down what it would actually take, and that visit costs you nothing.
(717) 555-0162Limestone under the county puts water up through the floor rather than the wall, the older rows sit on rubble stone that is never plumb, and July dew points sweat the block.
Rated 5 out of 5
Smelled damp down there every summer we owned the place. They drained the floor before a stud went up, then framed and finished it. Third July down there and no smell.
Rated 5 out of 5
Stone foundation, 1880s farmhouse, and the township sat on the permit two weeks longer than anyone wanted. Curt called every Friday of that wait anyway. The bar and the family room were done by August.
Rated 5 out of 5
My mother moved in with us in the spring, so the basement had to be an apartment by then. The stair was the part I never thought about. She has her own door at the top now and comes and goes without us.
If you would rather hear it from somebody down the road, ask us for two names when we come out.
Get a free quoteSix real basements from the last two years, each one with the town it is in and the thing about it that made the job awkward.
Full finish under a 1974 ranch
Lititz
Eleven hundred square feet turned into a family room, an office and a half bath. The main trunk sat low, so the ducts were rerouted rather than boxed.
Interior drain and a new pit
Ephrata
The floor seeped every March. We broke the slab at the footer, ran perforated pipe to a sealed pit, and repoured before any framing went in.
Egress bedroom in a rowhouse
Columbia
A stone wall cut for a code-sized opening and a well dug outside. The sill height meant dropping the opening rather than raising the floor.
In-law suite with its own stair
Manheim
Kitchenette, bathroom and bedroom under a split level. An ejector pump took the waste up to a stack running on the far side of the house.
Theater room and wet bar
Millersville
Resilient channel and mineral wool between the joists so the room above stays quiet. The bar sink drains into the same ejector basin.
Basement bathroom and laundry
Mount Joy
The slab was cut for a shower and a floor drain, then a dehumidifier was plumbed to the pit so the towels dry without the room going damp.
A free measure, and the code work written down before framing.
Two basements the same size can land a long way apart on price, and most of the gap sits under the floor rather than in the finish you can see.
Which of these actually apply is settled by somebody standing in the basement with a tape and a light, and that visit costs you nothing. Get a free quote
Square footage below grade does not count the way the floor above it does.
No published report puts a resale figure on basement finishing, and we are not going to invent one. Remodeling studies price the jobs a buyer shops for whole, a kitchen or a bath or a deck, and a basement is not one of them.
What an appraiser does instead is count the space as below-grade area and value it separately from the floors above, usually well under them.
So the question is not what percentage comes back, it is whether the room counts at all. A permitted egress window, a full bathroom, and heat and cooling taken off the house system rather than a plug-in unit are what put the space on the report. A ceiling under seven feet, a plug-in heater and any smell of damp keep it off.
Six to ten weeks end to end on a whole basement, and the loud, dusty part of it is over in the first two.
Ring (717) 555-0162 and somebody calls you back the same day to book a free look at the basement.
Get a free quoteTwo crews have finished basements in Lancaster, Lititz, Ephrata and Mount Joy since 2009, about thirty a year. Moisture first, then framing, the egress window, the wiring, the ceiling height and the inspections, all under one contract with one person answering for them. A decision made down there in week one shows up as a problem in week six, which is a poor place to have two firms pointing at each other.
Call (717) 555-0162 or fill in the form and somebody will come and look at the basement. The visit is free, and the moisture plan and the code work are written down before a stud is cut.
Basement remodeling service area
We work Lancaster and about twenty-five miles out from it, which takes in most of the county and the near edge of York and Chester.
Primary service area
Lancaster, PA
Lancaster Basement Pros 342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603 (717) 555-0162Also serving
If your town is not on this list, ring anyway. The van is out past these most weeks and the visit still costs you nothing.
FAQs
Questions people ask before a basement gets booked
Yes, as long as the finished height holds seven feet under the joists and six foot four under a beam or a duct, which is what IRC R305 asks for. Below that the room cannot be called habitable, and the honest choices are lowering the floor, which is foundation work, or building it as storage.
No, and we will not quote it. Piers, wall anchors and bowing block are a structural engineer's call and a foundation contractor's work, so if any of it turns up on the visit we say so and give you a name. Finishing over a wall that is still moving wastes the whole job.
Radon mitigation is its own trade and we do not touch it. This county tests high often enough that we tell everybody to run a test before framing starts, because a mitigation pipe is far cheaper to route through an open basement than through a finished one.
A lot, for about two days. The stair opening gets sealed with plastic and a zip door, a negative air machine vents out of a window, and the saw runs wet. It still finds everywhere it can, so anything stored down there needs to be out before we start.
It has to come out, and that part is yours. We can point you at a company that will drop a container on the drive, and if there is a corner we are not touching we will sheet it and work around it. Nothing gets carried into your garage by us.
Licensed electrical and plumbing trades are brought in and they pull their own permits alongside ours. The rough-in is inspected before anything is closed up, so the panel work and the drain lines are signed off by the township while the walls are still open and anything can be moved.
About two-thirds go solid and accept the access panels. A drop grid costs you two inches of height and looks like an office, but it comes down in a minute when a valve drips. Where a lot of plumbing runs overhead, a grid in that one bay and solid everywhere else is the usual answer.
Ring us. Seasonal movement shows at the corners of doors and openings in the first year and that is normal, so we come back and make it good once things have settled. If the crack is in the block behind the framing rather than in the finish, that is a different conversation and an engineer's.
Almost never. Water arriving at the joint between the floor and the wall is an interior drain and a pit, which is about a week of work before anything else can start. What we will not do is frame over it and hope, so if the drainage is the bigger half of the job the quote will say so.
One truck on the drive and a trailer at the curb. Broken slab goes out in buckets up the stairs unless there is a walkout or a window big enough to take a chute. On a city row with no drive we book the street with the parking authority a few days ahead of the concrete work.
Yes, and drainage first is the only order that works. Framing, board and paint can wait a year without costing you anything, but everything under the floor has to be right before any of it goes up. The usual split is water and rough-in now, finishes when you are ready.
The signed permit card, the inspection sign-offs from the township, the scale drawing marked up with anything that moved on site, and a note of where every shutoff and access panel ended up. Paint and flooring offcuts are left in a box for the touch-up you will want in year two.
We have worked on Lancaster basements since 2009 and we call back the same day.
Lancaster Basement Pros finishes basements in Lancaster, Lititz, Ephrata and the townships around them. Drainage, a sump and a vapor barrier first, then framing, board, floor, ceiling and lighting. Bathrooms, wet bars, egress windows and in-law suites too. Foundation repair and radon work go to the trades licensed for those.
Why call a basement crew and not a general builder?
Whether the basement is dry and empty or wet and full of boxes, the next move is the same. Call (717) 555-0162 and somebody rings you back the same day to arrange a look at it. You get a scale layout and a written price out of that visit, and no obligation to do anything with either.
Give us a call
office@lancasterbasementpros.com
Send us a message
342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
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