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Most unfinished basement already have some type of solid and level flooring in place, even if it’s just a concrete slab. Alternately, some basement floors are made of wood framing covered with wooden boards or plywood called a subfloor. However, you may find that the basement area you want to finish is little more than a dirt-floored crawlspace. What can you do? First, ask how much height or headroom the basement currently has. Why? Because you want to make sure that, after adding a new 4-inch thick floor you have 7 feet 6 inches of height to make it livable (according to the building code). If the area can’t be made livable, maybe it can be made useful for storage. If your basement has sufficient height for installing a new floor over dirt you’ll probably need to hire a contractor to install it. In fact, you may first need an excavation contractor to remove and level dirt, extracting it through a basement window or a new opening in the foundation. Then a framing or concrete contractor can prepare and install the new floor. If your basement has posts and supports, you’ll probably need an engineer to help design the new floor. Having given you the worst-case scenario, I’ll tell you that dirt-floored full-height basements are relatively rare and typically are found only under older rural homes. Most full-basement homes with concrete foundations also have reinforced concrete floors. And even the ones that don’t can be retrofitted with a solid floor for less money than expanding your home horizontally. More often, basement floors have cracks. Fortunately, they can be repaired either by the homeowner (using concrete repair products available at larger building material stores) or by concrete contractors.
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