Last week the local city code guy effectively nixed our plans for finishing the attic of our newly purchased house built in 1918. Needing to add headroom in the stairwell, upgrade the floor joists, and requiring a second entrance/exit besides the egres window made the cost a bit unpractical. So... now we're looking at finishing about 1/3 our basement. I have a couple of questions. 1. The cement floor down there is contoured towards a central floor drain. Does it need to be flattened? If not, how do I resolve joining the curved floor with the straight bottom plate of the future partition and keep everything level? 2. The current joist girder is a 5x6 running down the center of the house supported by 5x6 posts every 6'. One such post would be right in the middle of the room which is a problem. I'm guessing the easiest solution would be replacing the girder with a steel beam so we can remove the post, perhaps only in the offending section. Is there a better way of doing this? Does anyone have any experience with doing such a thing? How much would something like this cost? Hundreds? Thousands? 3. Also dealing with the floor I'm a bit paranoid about putting carpet directly on concrete. I saw at home depot that they had these 2'x2' osb panels with a plastic raised surface on one side, I'm guessing to isolate/raise them up from concrete. Is there a reason I shouldn't use these? Thanks a lot. I'll be doing the patch test this week to evaluate seepage from the floor and walls. None of it feels or looks wet, but there is a musty smell if our dehumidifier is off for more than 2 days. -- Ryan

Upon entering my house you walk up five steps underneath those steps is a crawl space which I use for storing things like coolers and paint brushes etc. This space is acessed thru the basement. which we are in the process of finishing. We replace the steps last year, and I painted inside the crawl space with the paint that stops water leaks (it did get water seepage at one time) When you walk into my house sometimes you can smell a musty odor. I sprinkle bleach there on a regular basis but the smell eventually come back. Any suggestion on how to keep the smell away. Thank you Carol