Fabulous finished basement

"Anything you do in a basement affects the whole house," says Scott. All the home’s electrical, heating and plumbing systems converge there. He and Susan sketched a floor plan to accommodate three rooms and a hall in a 400 sq. ft. space. "But first we had to dig down 14" in order to gain 7" of headroom," Scott says. Going deeper would have necessitated under pinning the footings to preserve the integrity of the foundation – too time- and cost-prohibitive. The couple replaced their aging furnace and hot water tank with a single compact system – a state-of-the-art wall-hung Munchkin boiler. "They’re 50 to 100% more expensive than conventional systems, but in four to seven years you get full payback in fuel savings," says Steve Goldie of Noble Trade, the dealer Scott worked with. The savings were important to the couple, who recovered some of their costs by participating in an eco-retrofit program and taking advantage of government rebates, grants and tax credits.

Bathroom Scott built the vanity from nine-ply furniture-grade Baltic birch plywood because he likes seeing the end grain when he opens the drawers. The hardware on the sliding shower door beautifully echoes the drawer pulls.