Okay, I bought my house with the intention of finishing the basement. Clearly I'm never going to acquire enough skills and time to do it myself... to give a rough idea, it's ~775 feet of open space with the stairs in the center. Concrete slab, cold but no water issues.
To get a basic finishing job on this, enough electrical for a gameroom (there are only a couple outlets scattered now)... rough jab at a cost for a skilled pro? We're talking no plumbing at this point.
Then, maybe after that, have a bathroom added where the washer and dryer are, which would require some small plumbing but also a sewage ejector pump as the output line is about 3 feet off the floor.
Chad, your situation with the setup is identical to what my brother-in-law has/had. He's a carpenter, and got a deal (free) on a bunch of metal studs - enough to do the entire basement. I'll take pics of it - hopefully on Tuesday if we get together like normal - and post 'em here for folks to see. I'll also try to get him to give me some rough estimates for what he'd charge to do things, and I'll see if I can separate it out because I know there's things he did that folks might not want, and therefore would like to remove that price.
As far as the bathroom, he thought the same thing as you, and it turned out that he was able to bust out some of the floor and simply tie into the waste stack with no problems. I'll also see if I can find out how he determined that.
He's got the same center stairs setup. When you get to the bottom of the stairs, to your left and forward, there's the bar and its seating area. To the left and behind, there's a living area/computer area. To the right and forward, there's a nice opening for an antique hutch for glass storage, and behind that wall is his workshop. To the right and behind, there's a bathroom with a shower stall in there, probably about 8x6 or so, and then a separate laundry room.
I'll give you some more info as soon as possible. I'll tell you though, if you can frame the walls in yourself, which shouldn't be difficult for you at all (just some studs laid out according to basic carpentry standards), that'll take a decent chunk out of the cost for you. If you insulate yourself (again, a VERY easy step to complete yourself), you've taken a lot of the time-consuming part of the job out of the equation, and that's SERIOUSLY very easy stuff. A miter saw would speed it up for you, but a circ saw will be fine (I wouldn't trust a jigsaw for making a job like this easy). A hammer or drill will allow you to fasten everything together, and you can rent a Hilti (a nail gun that used .22 loads to drive nails into concrete) for cheap, or buy one if you think you might use it again. The basic formwork is VERY easy to do, and you'd probably want to pay an electrician to run outlets if you're not confident in doing that.
I don't know why, but I'm all jazzed. Why don't you live closer, I'd help ya, ya dork!
