We really didn’t think about specifying that the HVAC, electrical and plumbing lines should be run so that they could easily be covered in the finished ceiling. Therefore the subcontractors, just went from point A to point B with the smallest runs.

There were huge HVAC ducts running diagonally in many areas. Plumbing that ran under the joists.

Our quotes to fix the runs with other subcontractors was thousands of dollars.

Bo simply incorporated the maze of HVAC, electrical and plumbing lines into his creative ceiling drops as he installed beadboard. As you can see the unsightly lines and steel beams were hidden in such a way to define areas and add to the cozy feel of our basement

Our 1st floor shares the basement HVAC. Bo discovered one of the huge ducts wasn’t fully attached and fixed the problem. Magically our upstairs temperature drastically improved plus our electrical bill decreased.

Homeowners often use Pinterest to organize their vision boards. We used Pinterest, Houzz and Google images for inspiration but preferred to use SnagIt and Evernote to organize our ideas. Either method is excellent to communicate ideas and preferences.

This Evernote page on the left has two images which sparked the idea of having a half wall with bookcase combined with a mudroom at the entrance from our garage.

We added another Evernote page with craftsman mudroom ideas. Using all these pictures, Bo could explain what would work in our space and build from our vision.

As we finalized our design decisions, we would tape our examples next to where Bo would build, He always had our references available.

On this mudroom picture, we included a photo of our built-in window seating upstairs plus 2 views of Pinterest mudrooms. We included a corbel molding product photo which were were buying on Amazon Prime.

Bo got us interested in repurposing furniture. At our request, Bo repurposed a mahogany desktop to be the lid of our mudroom seat. He, also, built 2 night stands from the drawers of our desk.

Most basements have unsightly steel poles that need to be hidden creatively. Most contractors hide by wrapping them in a column. We wondered how that solution would look in our basement.

There are great tools on the internet to help newbies do mockups. My graphic artist cleaned up this picture and added our floor using Flooret Modin's "see in this room" tool. Their floor mockup worked well.

Next he proceeded to use Benjamin Moore's "Paint Your Room" tool. For some homeowners that would have worked but with all our detailed molding, my graphic artist decided to use Photoshop to paint our walls. He then took a column from Google images and hid our steel pole with the column image.

Without this mockup, we would have thought a column was a good solution. As you can see, the column breaks up the floor and stands out like a sore thumb.

A wrapped column would be an ugly step child in our basement so we went back to the Photoshop drawing board.

This Photoshop mockup got a definite thumbs up from all of us.

Rather than drawing the eye to an out of place column, a half wall looked like a natural craftsman feature. Bo agreed and proceeded to take some leftover supplies to make this mockup a reality.

In a few hours, we were admiring a ready to paint framed, sheetrocked and mudded half wall. Bo and my graphic artist made an incredible team.

We needed to design our wet bar configuration using supplies leftover from our 1st floor kitchen cabinets. We took a straight on picture of the empty wet bar area, used Flooret Modin's tool to add our floor and pasted overlays of various internet wet bar images in the scene. Any homeowner with basic skills could do these simple mockups.

We quickly ran through and rejected about 50 images using just SnagIt. When we found an image that worked, we gave the concept to my graphic artist to extract the internet image and place more professionally for Bo.

This Photoshop mockup is close to our final design. Bo had a good example to build our wet bar.

Using Photoshop for photorealistic mockups is a great way to see problems before wasting time on dead ends. After our graphics expert did this mock up, Bo saw that we needed to add more sheetrock area to balance and center the media area.

Plans never would have been the best way for us to visualize costly decisions. Using internet photos and Bo's talent to build from pictures gave us a finished basement beyond our dreams.

Even without full Photoshop mockups, a simple internet picture is all Bo needs to build your dreams. We highly recommend this method to see your vision boards become reality.