When I was growing up, our basement was never finished. It had concrete floors and walls, and all the pipes were visible above head. All that there was down there was a whole bunch of random junk, and a couple of

machine aluminum

shelves to hold even more random junk. When I first moved back home after college, my dad told me that I could live in the basement if I wanted to make it nice. He figured the value of the house would improve with a finished basement, so he agreed to bankroll it as long as I did the work. It is a pretty big basement, and I think I did a great job with it if I say so myself. I tiled the floors, put in ceiling tiles and painted all of the walls. I bought a carpet to put down under where I put the wrap around couch and the television and also one for under where I put my bed. There was still a big open space on one side of the “L” shaped basement, so I bought an old ping pong table at a garage sale, and put that down there too. It turned out so nice that I wish I had it while I was growing up.