342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
Full Basement Finishing in Lancaster
The shell is dried out first, framed in steel, and the rough-in is inspected with the walls still open so nothing gets buried.
You end up with a floor of the house that looks like the rest of it, not like a basement with paint on.
This is the finish itself. Framing, insulation, the floor, the ceiling, the lighting, and the doors and trim that turn a shell into rooms you can live in.
If the floor still gets wet, that is waterproofing and drainage and it goes in first. A bedroom below grade needs an egress window and a permit before anybody can call it a bedroom.
Around two hundred and forty full basements finished since 2009, most of them post-war ranches and split levels rather than city rows.
Whole-basement finishes from a bare shell, framing and insulation on their own where somebody else is doing the rest, basement flooring laid over slab, and ceilings and lighting where the headroom is the problem.
Walls are 20-gauge steel on a treated track, an inch clear of the block, with two inches of closed-cell foam sprayed on the masonry behind them. That is the insulation and the vapor retarder in one pass, so there is no cavity for warm air to reach cold block in and leave water.
A family in a split level that has run out of bedrooms and does not want to move, and a landlord turning an empty lower floor into a rentable unit before the lease year turns.
Book a free basement measure at (717) 555-0162. You will stop apologizing for the stairs and start telling people to go down and have a look!
One crew from the framing through to the paint, with the licensed trades brought in for the rough-in and inspected before it closes up.
Services
This is the whole floor handled by one crew rather than five trades you have to line up yourself, and it suits the household that has looked at moving and decided against it. Ring once the basement stays dry, because everything here assumes it does. Six to ten weeks on an average shell, and the loud fortnight sits at the front of it.
For the owner who means to do the finish themselves and wants the walls right first, and for anybody who pulled old paneling off and found wet block behind the furring strips. Studs stand clear of the masonry with foam sprayed on it behind them, so warm air has no cavity to meet cold block in. Call if you want the shell and nothing else.
For anybody standing on bare concrete working out what can safely go on it, and for the owner lifting carpet that never smelled right again after a wet spring. Nothing you walk on ends up touching the slab. Ring if the floor is the only part you want done and somebody will tell you whether it is flat enough first.
For the basement where the joists, the ducts and the beam under them are the whole problem, and for anybody still lighting a floor with two bulbs on a pull cord. Solid board reads as a room and takes a week. A grid comes down in a minute when a valve drips and costs you two inches. Ring and the height gets measured before either is priced.
Most people who ask us about an addition already own the space.
The basement wins when you have seven feet clear under the joists, a floor that stays dry through a wet March, and a stair that lands somewhere you would not mind walking past. That covers most ranches and split levels built around here after 1955, and it costs a long way less than new footprint.
An addition wins when the joists sit at six foot eight and cannot be moved, when a bedroom needs a window no well outside can reach, or when you need more square feet than the house stands on. Finishing a basement that fails on head height buys you a room nobody can legally sleep in.
We say which one it is on the visit, before anybody has spent anything. We do not build additions, so a basement that should not be finished is a job we hand back rather than sell, and that has happened often enough to be worth putting in writing.
Twenty-gauge steel an inch off the block, closed-cell foam behind it, and a dimple mat under every floor.
Framing is 20-gauge galvanized steel at sixteen inches on center, standing on a treated bottom track shot into the slab and held an inch clear of the masonry.
Two inches of closed-cell foam goes on the block behind it, which is the insulation and the vapor retarder in one, and the rim joist gets the same, because that is where most of the heat leaves.
Floors take a dimple mat over the slab and three-quarter tongue-and-groove plywood on top, so nothing you walk on touches concrete. Ceilings are boarded with access panels at every valve, clean-out and damper, and the finished height is held at seven feet under the joists and six foot four under a beam, which is what IRC R305 asks for.
Ring us and somebody comes out with a tape and a laser, measures the height you actually have, and puts it in writing for nothing.
(717) 555-0162Most of the gap comes from what the house hands you rather than from what you choose. Square footage is the smallest part of a finishing quote.
None of this is guessable over the phone. Somebody walks the basement, writes it down and leaves you the numbers, and the walk costs you nothing. Get a free quote
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 quoteAn appraiser counts a permitted room and ignores a nice one that is not.
No published report puts a resale figure on basement finishing, and there is no honest way to invent one. Remodeling studies price the jobs a buyer shops for whole, a kitchen or a bath or a deck, and finishing a basement is not one of the categories any of them measure.
What is not in doubt is how the space gets counted. Finished basement area is reported separately from the floors above and rarely at the same rate, so what moves the number is whether it counts at all rather than what it cost.
A permit on file, a ceiling holding seven feet, an egress window in any room called a bedroom, and heat off the house system are what put it on the report.
The city rows run out of head height before anything else, the stone walls will not take a straight stud line, and the stair is usually too steep to keep.
Six finished basements, each with the town it is in and the thing about the house that decided how the floor was laid out.
Split level opened into one room
Manheim
Nine hundred square feet with the beam boxed rather than moved. Vinyl plank over a dimple mat, and one long wall left open for storage.
Two bedrooms and a study
Lititz
The duct run was rerouted to hold seven foot one across the whole floor. Returns were cut into each room so the furnace could keep up with it.
Rowhouse basement lounge
Columbia
Stone walls furred and strung to a line, losing four inches at the deepest point. Solid ceiling with access panels at both shutoffs.
Ranch basement with a bar wall
Ephrata
One open room, dimmable cans on three switches, and the mechanical end closed off behind a louvred door with the furnace clearances kept.
Play room and laundry
Leola
Engineered floor over plywood on a mat, so the room reads warm underfoot. The old paneling and its furring strips came out first.
Media room under a 1968 ranch
Willow Street
Mineral wool between the joists and resilient channel under the board, so the television does not carry up into the kitchen above it.
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.
Ask us for two addresses when we visit, and go and knock on the door yourself.
Get a free quoteFAQs
Questions about finishing a basement in Lancaster
Yes, keeping the clearances the appliance plate asks for and a door wide enough to get a new heater through one day. The thirty inches of working space in front of the electrical panel is code and never gets built over. Most plans end up with a mechanical closet and a louvred door on it.
Not once the walls are foamed and there is a supply and a return down there. The cold in an unfinished basement is the block itself rather than the air, so with two inches of closed-cell foam over the masonry the room holds temperature about as well as the floor above it does.
Anything with no solid wood in it that can sit on a dimple mat. Vinyl plank and tile both do. Engineered wood is fine over plywood on a mat, solid wood is not, and carpet only makes sense with a pad rated for below grade rather than the one off the roll upstairs.
Yes, though they sit in their own category on this site because the plumbing decides the plan rather than the layout. If a bathroom is going in, where the stack runs and whether an ejector pump is needed gets settled before the framing is drawn, not after it has gone up.
Most people do. A stud wall with a door on it, bare block behind, and the mechanicals on that side of it. That keeps the finished square footage where you actually want it and gives you somewhere to put the Christmas boxes that is not behind a bedroom door.
Framing and screw guns for a couple of weeks, and that is the loud part once the concrete work is behind you. Nothing starts before eight in the morning. If somebody in the house works nights, tell us at the quote and we move the noisy days rather than pretend it is quiet.
Whichever one holds seven feet under the finished ceiling. A soffit is cheaper and eats the height in one strip. Rerouting a trunk costs a day of sheet metal work and keeps the ceiling flat across the whole room. We measure the joists before quoting and tell you which your basement needs.
Usually. Take a piece off an upstairs casing, and either a mill runs it or we find the closest stock profile to it. Old rowhouse trim is often a shape nobody makes any more, in which case it gets built up from two separate pieces and painted so the joint disappears.
Yes. They are wired into a house circuit and interconnected with the ones upstairs, with a carbon monoxide head near the furnace as well. All of that is inspected along with the rest of the electrical rough-in, before any board goes on and while the runs can still be changed.
You get a marked-up drawing at handover showing every stud line, junction box, valve and clean-out on the floor. Access panels go in at anything that will ever need a wrench on it, and they are painted the same color as the wall around them rather than left white and obvious.
Once the paint has had a day and the dehumidifier has run for a week. Fresh compound, primer and paint all put water into a room that has just been sealed up, and pushing a sofa hard against a wall before that has dried out is how a mark shows up in month two.
Yes, and it leaves on the trailer rather than sitting on your curb. Nineteen-seventies paneling on furring strips usually turns out to be hiding wet block, so the tear-out doubles as the survey, and anything we find behind it goes on the quote before the framing is priced.
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.
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office@lancasterbasementpros.com
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342 N Queen St, Ste 2, Lancaster, PA, 17603
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