For all the stereotypes of “basement dwellers” and the like, I’ve rarely met people who lived in the attic/basement/garage loft–whether as kids, adults living in their parent’s house, or as apartment dwellers. Did you at any time live in these unconventional housing spaces? Why? What were the pluses and minuses, and would you recommend it to others?
From age 15 to 20, except when I was away at college, I “lived” in the basement. All the bedrooms were upstairs, and I didn’t want to share with my sister any more, so I moved all my stuff downstairs.
Does that count?
I’ve lived in a lot of different places over the years but only one would qualify as an attic/basement/garage loft. It was a studio apartment that somebody had made out of the basement of their house (they lived in upstairs part of the house). It was one big room with a small kitchen alcove and a small bathroom.
It was a long time ago but as I recall, the main attractions of the place was that it was relatively close to work, convenient to a good town, and cheap.
I lived in a partially underground level of an apartment building - it was let into the side of a hill. I also lived in a converted garage, ground floor and second floor. Yay college age living arrangements )
When I first got to Purdue, I lived in the basement of a large house that had been converted into 4 apartments. The owners had the first floor and the part of the basement that contained the washer and dryer. The second floor held 2 apartments, and I had 4 fairly large rooms in the basement. It wasn’t too terrible - I had a few windows that let in some sunlight, and the bedroom was in the darkest part with no windows. For a while, I had free cable, till the owners made us all pay for our own. And I did have an off-street parking space right outside my door.
On the other hand, the bathroom was off the kitchen, as far from the bedroom as it could possibly be. There were no doors between the rooms - the bedroom was separated from the living room by a short section of wall. The owners’ bedroom was right above mine, and they were, um, very affectionate most nights. I also had no control over the temperature, which sucked during that blizzard.
But it was cheap and it was mine, so there was that.
In Boston we lived in a basement apartment on Beacon Hill. It had a drain in the middle of the living room. When it rained it was needed.
It was a dump, but hey it was on Beacon Hill, and you can’t get a better location.
From the age of about 11 to 14 I lived in the basement because I didn’t want to share with my step brother. Bare concrete walls and floor, cold in the winter, but it was my space.
I’ve had 2 guys living in my basement.
One was the friend of an ex boyfriend and he was living in a storage locker down the road and I felt bad so I let him stay with me. The basement was not set up for living, it was just full of junk. He pushed some junk aside and set up an old TV and an air mattress and there he was. I enjoyed the rent payment but when he got a DUI and I had to drive him to work every day at 7 AM so I could collect the rent payment, I had enough. He had to go.
I told him he had to go so my buddy from school could move in. Buddy had been living with other buddies of ours but they were about to have a baby and they needed space. So I took in my buddy and he stayed with me rent-free in exchange for cleaning the house and some yard work. I cleaned out half the basement and he set up a very nice room down there, about the size of 3 bedrooms. I put up sheets as a wall and he had shelves, a table, an entertainment center, a desk (free wi-fi), a place to hang his clothes and a big queen-sized bed. Laundry was right out his door and he had garage parking even. This worked out fine until he got a girlfriend who started staying her like 5 nights a week. Two 30 & 40-somethings thinking this was an ok arrangement (for her to stay here while he was here for free). Eventually after 3 years (ha!) I told him it was enough and he had to go so I could set up a playroom for my nieces in the space he was occupying.
I did set up the playroom.
Anyway - the way my buddy had his room set up, even in my un-finished basement, seemed awesome. I was envious of him! Quite an awesome space for free - I would recommend it if you have any sucker friends like me 
My daughter just moved from a basement apartment in what had been a medical services building built in the 1920’s . The building had been converted to condos in the last 5 years.
From the main entrance one reached their apartment by elevator or down a tight, narrow staircase. There were 4 windows that were inset in window wells about 3’ below grates in the surrounding sidewalk. There was one exterior door exiting into an area about 2’ below the nearest sidewalk. Apparently it was a great deal and they never had any moisture problems.
You must not get out much.
When I was married to my first husband, we lived with his parents in their basement. It was not an - uh - ideal situation.
Actually it sucked. It REALLY sucked.
When I was at college and shortly afterward I had a remarkably lackadaisical attitude toward figuring out where I was going to live. More than once I was on the last month of a lease and had not planned where I would live next.
This led to some interesting short-term accommodations. I set up a bed in a friends garage for about a month, he let me come inside to use the bathroom in the morning and at night.
Another summer I had a basement room in a house some friends had rented. Like ZipperJJ’s friend I hung up sheets for walls. Unlike him, I found it difficult to convince women that I had potential as a partner!
When I was a teen, I unofficially moved into the furnished basement and slept on the couch just because it was ten degrees cooler down there in a house with no working AC. Not that I minded the additional privacy either, of course. We didn’t have a TV or anything down there so it wasn’t a problem that I was hogging the basement.
Later my sister got married and her and her husband moved into the basement after renovating it and stayed there for about a year while they saved money for a house. I was in college at the time so can’t speak for the details of how well it worked day to day with my mother living upstairs.
Only if there was only one window in the room, and that was version XP or later.
I lived in a basement from about the ages of 12 to 14, and it sucked. When heavy rains came it flooded with about 1/4" of water, so I had to learn to keep my stuff off the floor at least. And jumping out of bed into cold water on bare or sock feet wasn’t fun.
It was a nice little house that my father built in a nice location with woods and a creek and fields. I think the house just didn’t have the right grading to keep water out of the basement window wells.
This, except I’m a guy. My sisters shared a room and, as they got older, wanted more privacy. In order for everyone to have their own bedroom one sibling would have to move into the partially finished basement. As the oldest I was given first choice, and picked the basement.
We built two bedrooms in the basement for my twins. They started living down there at the age of 10. My now 30-year old son came back for a visit and wanted to sleep downstairs.
Of course, as a baby boomer, about half my childhood friends had one or more family members living in basements – and occasionally sun porches, weather permitting.
I spent a little over a year living on the bottom floor of a fairly large house, renting what the owner considered a loft-style space. There were no subdivisions to the room other than the bathroom, and although it had a separate entrance from the front of the house, the back part of my space was underground (the house was built against a hill).
I’m realizing now that that’s probably as close as it comes to having a walk-out basement in California.
My first apartment in NYC was in the basement of a building on the Upper East Side. I split it with a co-worker. We had to put up a false wall to make a 2nd bedroom and the laundry room was right next to us. The one window was at ground level. Cockroach city… <shudder>
I grew up in a family of six kids. We had a large attic space which my dad insulated and finished, and five of us slept up there. The rooms were pretty normal except for the sloping upper part of the walls. The main inconvenience was that the bathroom was downstairs, and it was sometimes cold in the winter and hot in the summer. But we didn’t know any better, so it wasn’t too bad.
When I was a student one summer I lived in an attic room, and one semester in a shared basement apartment. The attic was pretty spacious and nice, but the basement sucked (especially because of my house mates).