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Parafly 12:35 PM 08-30-2010
Hey everyone,

My wife signed up here a while ago. She is a school teacher and we plan on having kids in the next year or so, and unfortunately there is no way my salary will support both of us plus kids so we have been discussing for a few months now starting up an in-home daycare to supplement our income when we have our children.

Well, me being the guy, I've got the manly task of finishing out our basement to turn it into DayCare Central, lol. I was looking for some tips, advice, and had a few questions on it as well.

First off: we have walkout basement. I started planning using Google Sketchup, and this is basically what it looks like down there today:



Center stairwell. i still have to add in the mechanical equipment to the drawing but 90% of it is along the left wall that will probably remain a utility and storage area.

I did a real quick draft of kind of what I'm thinking about:



What I'm wondering is; we have some exercise equipment thtat we actually do use regularly. (2 treadmills / weight bench. I'm thining about putting those in a corner behind a half-height wall. I could put up some of that indoor fencing people use to keep it "off limits" during the day. This would make the day care space about 28' by 14' (400 sq feet). I'd also add a half bath in that little room in the stairway nook to keep it all "downstairs", basically.

We only hope to start with a few kids (like 2 - 4 max) .. that would be enough to keep us afloat and afford everything - but who knows I might want to add more kids later. Is this enough area? What does your space look like?

I've got > 1 year to do this work, just trying to get my planning in order. Thanks all!

Nick
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