Hello all. We moved into a new house a year ago and it's time to start thinking about what to do with the basement. I'd like to see if any of you visionaries here can give me some ideas of what I can do in this space. I thought I had started a sketch already but can't seem to find it, so I'll just show some pictures. The overall size of the basement is 36 feet East/West and 40 feet North/South. The stairs start at the South in the middle.

At this point, my initial plan is for three rooms/areas. I'm thinking of having the southeast corner (where the electrical box is) be a one room with a wall starting at the end of the stairs (actually my thought is a partial wall that would actually be like a bar like what many others have done behind their seating area). The rough size of the room would be about 13'x18'. The idea would be for it to be a movie room down the road. I would expect to have a surround sound set up at some point, but as far as the video, I have no idea if we would go with a projector system or just a large TV.

I'm not sure what the remainder of that side of the basement would be, maybe just a typical family room type area (currently our 3rd bedroom is the toy room that we want to free up, along with the computer that is also in there) for the kids. That space would be around 17'x22'. Then on the other side of the basement I'm thinking about having a bedroom on the north side. I don't really know what I would do with the rest. There does appear to be some pipes in the floor for a bathroom (basically in line with the furnace) about 10' from the south wall.
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Looks like you have a really nice basement to work with. One of the biggest helping tools most find to use is Sketchup, the free drafting software from Google. It takes about 5-10 minutes to get the hang of it and allows you to get some visual ideas down on paper. I'd take some measurements of what you have and where down there, and then start cleaning some of the clutter up. Just by moving some of that stuff around, you'll be amazed at the ideas that pop into your head when you see the area differently.