The premium on space has seen interest in basements soar as they become elevated from mere storage rooms to day-to-day living spaces. If you have a cellar, it may make economic sense to exploit it, perhaps enlarge it and turn it into a habitable basement.
Depending on location, current value and style of the basement conversion, it could increase your home’s value by as much as 30 per cent.
Your first priority if you want to join the trend is to check with a local estate agent that developing your cellar would add to the value of the house. No such concerns apply if you are planning a new build, provided your plot is suitable – that is well drained and not subject to flooding, and allowing good access for excavation work. Including a basement can provide a whole floor of useful extra space. At this stage you can plan a design with windows into a well or courtyard – the ideal way to let in plenty of natural light.
Retro-fitting a basement into an existing house is the one option that needs the most careful investigation, because it is likely to be the most expensive of the three types of basement. You need to make sure you will redeem any outlay you make, and this will very much depend on property values. In city centres such as London property values are now so high that almost any type of basement build could be financially viable.
Within these projects, VID Construction undertakes the following works:
