Down There, Not in the Dark
How long does this take? And when do I find out what it costs, before or after I commit?
In this post, you’ll learn the five steps from your first phone call to your closing walk, when the price shows up and why, what the Buildertrend portal shows you every day, and how long it takes to finish a basement.
What to Expect When Finishing a Basement in Denver
When you finish a basement with us, expect design before dollars.
At Elevation Basements, we measure your basement, draw floor plans in about two days, price the project at standard finishes, sign a contract, and then select upgrades at our partnered design studio.
Construction averages eight to ten weeks while you keep living upstairs.
Daily photos are delivered to your Buildertrend portal.
Nothing gets guessed at.
We hold the number until the plans are approved because it is based on your plans and the standard finish level we quote against.
What to Expect When You Finish a Basement, From First Call to Final Walkthrough
Expect two separate phases, and expect the first to be finished before the second starts.
Phase one is design.
Phase two is construction, and that is when the meeting schedule kicks in.
You get five scheduled walkthroughs.
A frame walk, an electrical walk, a pre-drywall walk, a punch list walk, and a closing walk.
The frame walk and the electrical walk both take place before drywall covers anything up, which is the last easy moment to move an outlet or shift a wall by two feet.
You stay in the house the whole time.
We run dust mitigation, put zip walls at the top of your stairs, and block off the HVAC returns so basement air does not travel through your vents.
Every trade and every piece of material comes and goes through a basement egress window.
The basement stays isolated.
The Turn-Key Steps: Contact, Consultation, Floor Plan, Design Studio, and Build
Contact form, phone consultation, on-site consultation, floor plan design and approval, and then the design studio.
The build starts after all five are done.
You fill out the form or book a discovery call.
On the phone, we cover the scope of work you are hoping for, our process, your budget, your timeline, and ballpark pricing.
We also decide together whether this is a fit, and that applies to both sides.
Some of those calls end with us saying we are not the right company for the job.
Next, we come to your house with our design team, measure the basement, talk basement layout and remodeling plans, and look at conditions that never came up on the phone.
Ceiling heights. Where the HVAC runs. How the plumbing sits.
Then, floor plans are priced at our standard finish level.
The design studio comes last, after the contract is signed.
You sit down with a designer at our partner showroom off I-25 in the Denver Tech Center to pick out countertops, flooring, cabinets, and tile.
Every upgrade moves the number you are already holding.
Where the Free Design Phase Fits, and Why It Comes Before Pricing
Design sits between your on-site consultation and your contract, and the conceptual package is included at no cost.
Conceptual gets you simple 2D drawings, one round of revisions, and a layout we can build off of.
Limited, and plenty for a basement that is mostly one open space with a bedroom and a bath.
Design Plus is priced based on the complexity of your project.
Multiple rounds of revisions, a virtual design call, 3D renderings, and elevations.
That is the package for a custom basement where you need to see the room before it exists.
The plans come before the price because the price is built from the plans.
We draw your floor plan, spend about 2 days on it, send it over, and revise until you approve it, then quote against our standard finish level.
A number produced any earlier is a number for a basement nobody has drawn yet.
That is also why finish upgrades happen after you sign.
Your contract price already reflects a real layout at a real finish level, so choosing LVP over the carpet we usually recommend shows up as a visible line instead of a mystery.
LVP with its required concrete leveling runs $14.50 per square foot.
How the Buildertrend Client Portal Keeps You Updated Every Day
Your construction manager posts a daily log in Buildertrend, with photos, every day your project is active.
The portal holds more than the photos.
Your job schedule, to-do list, files, change orders, draw payments, and the detailed financials homeowners use to stay under budget all sit in the same place.
Log in at two in the morning if you want to.
The portal is one piece of the cadence. The rest comes to you.
From contract signing until your project starts, our production manager texts you every Friday.
Sometimes a check-in. Sometimes the lumber drops, and we need to meet your framer on Tuesday.
At the pre-construction meeting, we open a group text thread with you, both owners, the production manager, and the construction manager.
It carries the daily back-and-forth once trades are on site.
Every Friday during the build, your construction manager emails what got done that week, what is coming next week, and anything you need to plan around.
None of that requires you to ask.
How Long Does a Denver Basement Take to Finish
Eight to ten weeks, on average.
Some of our basements finish in six. Others run for four months.
The spread comes down almost entirely to scope.
A thousand square feet of mostly open space with a bedroom and a bathroom sits near the short end.
Add a wet bar, a theater, and LVP that needs the concrete ground down and leveled first, and you are adding weeks.
Custom structural work stretches it furthest.
One of our Aurora builds with a golf simulator, a hidden movie theater, a steam room, and a guest suite took four and a half months.
I-beams and monoposts had to be designed in, and a winter start made coordinating trade traffic and material deliveries harder.
You can walk through it on our Aurora featured project page.
Design time sits outside all of that. Floor plans average about two days.
Why One Team From Design to Build Means Nothing Falls Through the Cracks
The team that measures your basement and draws your floor plan works for the same company as the crew that frames it, so nobody inherits a plan they had no hand in making.
Basements are all we build.
That is narrower than it sounds. A firm running kitchens, bathrooms, and basements in the same month necessarily splits its attention.
We have seen enough basements that there are not many scenarios or conditions we have not already run into, and that is what lets us keep a project moving when something pops up.
Something always pops up. It is a construction.
Specialization shows up in specific places.
Where the HVAC has to run through a ceiling with no spare inches. How to reroute plumbing so it works with framing instead of fighting it.
Code that applies to basements and nowhere else in the house.
Denver metro soil is its own category of that knowledge.
There is a volcanic clay in the ground here called bentonite, and it can swell up to 100 times its size when water gets to it, which is why slabs around here heave, crack, and settle.
So we frame floating walls.
A pressure-treated base plate shot into the concrete, a three-inch gap, then the wall hung from the ceiling and pinned to that plate, so a moving slab never drives framing into your main floor joists.
Our trade partners are not names off a list.
They are the same plumbing, electrical, and concrete crews on every project.
Catching all of that on the plan is how we keep your schedule from moving.
Ready to Ask the Hard Questions? Bring Them to Elevation Basements
Choosing a basement contractor comes down to knowing which tier you actually want, then checking the proof before you sign anything.
Reviews you have read rather than counted, the contractor’s own photos, a warranty term in writing, and a permit pulled by somebody licensed. If you are working through that list right now, fill out our contact form or give us a call today.
