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What do YOU have down in your cellar? If it's like most peoples, your basement started out like mine as an empty space with a furnace and a hot water heater. In five years it was filled up with boxes of stuff you don't need, half finished projects you'll never finish and lots of very happy spiders. I hate to admit it took me sixteen years of planning and wishing before I decided to finish the basement. The clincher was the day I got a nice hand-me-down computer and a beautiful desk to put it in. There was no space in the rest of the house for my beloved computer, so down the cellar it went. After six months of alternately freezing to death, wiping the dirt off the computer and feeling like a refugee, we made the big decision.

It would cost about $4000., even using the talents of my carpenter brother-in-law. No easy task, there was concrete everywhere we looked - floor, walls, and even the ceiling. The design we settled on avoided the duct work along the walls, providing closet space four feet deep and eighteen feet long. (We have no garage) Under the stairs was space for luggage pieces and all the extra food bought in quantity.

One fourth of the area at one end was home to all of my tools and the home-made workbench in a closed-off room. The other end created a narrow but long space for my bicycle and Christmas boxes. The central area ended up measuring 24' by 16', a not too shabby size for out entertainment room. At one end is the computer center. An HP Media Center computer keeps company with an HP 13 x 19 inkjet printer and a sideways scanner. A couch and love seat divide the room nicely, facing two wall units containing a TV, a hi fi radio/CD/DVD, and a dry bar. All of the speakers are built into the walls to save space. In the corner under a boxed ceiling with dimmer spots stands the keyboard organ. For my wife I built in a four foot deep by eight foot wide sealed closet for the extra dishes and glassware.

Marianne decorated the walls with pictures of flowers and hand-painted plaques. The eight foot ceiling was popcorn sprayed, the sheet rock walls were treated to resemble rough plaster and painted a pale tan. The floor is glued-on high traffic beige carpet. The whole project took about three weeks and they say it will add $8000 to the selling price of the townhouse. I'm just as happy as a bug in a rug and I may never leave my beautiful cellar.

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