How much does it cost to finish a basement? Complete basement expense breakdown

We recently moved into a new home and immediately started finishing our 2200 square foot basement. After a lot of blood, sweat and money, we are finally done. If you’re thinking about finishing your basement, here’s a basement expense breakdown and how much it REALLY costs to finish a basement. Check it out!

*Before and after photos of our basement finish*.

When we started finishing our basement, we tried to make an educated guess as to how much it would cost. It helped us make adjustments along the way so we could try to stay at least a little bit in budget. Here’s how much it all cost. Check it out!

Decide what work you want to do yourself

Although it would be nice if we could just hire out all the work, we knew we could save some money doing some of the work ourselves. So, here’s a list of projects that we decided to tackle ourselves and how much money we saved in the process:

Electrical: Although not a licensed electrician, my husband decided to do all of the electrical in our basement. He did an amazing job and saved us about $7,000-$8,000 dollars.
Flooring: I stained the concrete in our basement instead of installing flooring. This saved us a whopping $9,300
Demolition: We had to knock out some old framing before the framers could come in. So we put our kids to work and this saved us about $600.
Digging: My husband dug a hole for a new window well and that saved us about $400.
Painting: This didn’t save us as much money as I thought. We painted our basement ourselves and that saved us about $1,000.

My amazing husband installed all the electrical in our basement

Decide what work to hire out

Let’s be honest, most of the work done to complete our basement was hired out. Some work is best left to the professionals. Even though it costs a lot of money, you just want to make sure it’s done right. Here’s what we hired out:

Framing
Plumbing
Insulation
Sheetrocking/mudding/taping
Kitchen cabinet/countertop install
Backsplash
Trim/finish work

*Hiring someone to do the mudding and taping is totally worth the cost*

Total expenses vs what we budgeted

So, let’s get down to the numbers. Here’s a breakdown of everything we spent vs what we budgeted. It was hard to guess exactly how much stuff would cost. But we saved money in certain areas and we actually came under budget which was great!

Basement finish expense breakdown — *Complete basement expense breakdown*

Finished basement apartment kitchen — *Our finished basement apartment kitchen*

Tips and tricks we learned along the way

Money: It will most likely cost more money than you think to finish your basement. We would have definitely gone over budget if we hadn’t done the flooring, painting and electrical ourselves.
Time: It will most likely take more time to finish your basement than you think. It took us about four months to finish our basement and we were hoping for three.
Dumpster: Instead of leaving a dumpster parked on our property for four months, we borrowed a dump trailer. This probably saved us about $2,000.
Basement apartment: If you’re not adding a basement apartment, the cost to finished your basement will most likely be waaaay less expensive.
Expect hiccups: Inevitably, something will go wrong during your remodel. Our main sewer line backed up and the insulators accidentally blew insulation all over my son’s room.
Contractor: Consider hiring a contractor. Although I would like to think that we saved money by doing most of the work ourselves, I still wonder if a contractor might have cost around the same.
Buffer: Budget for lots of miscellaneous expenses. We spent $3,700 on things we just didn’t realize we needed buy.
Winter: Consider finished your basement in the winter. Subcontractors are usually slow during the cold months and it’s easier to schedule them.
Investment: All of the money that you are spending to finish your basement will only increase the value of your home. So, it’s worth it in the end.
Shop around: It’s worth it to get multiple bids on the big-ticket items. Everyone isn’t priced the same.
Finish work: Spend a little extra money to decorate your basement the way you like it. Here’s some links to some of the items that I bought to decorate our basement: LED bathroom mirror, bathroom vanity light, floor plant, gold cabinet pulls, wooden floating shelves.