Basement Finishing in Grimes, IA

We line up basement finishing work across Grimes, from the older blocks near 1st Street where Iowa 44 runs through town, out to the newer additions north and west of the Iowa 141 corridor. Grimes was founded in 1881 and incorporated on May 7, 1894, taking its name from James W. Grimes, the third governor of Iowa and later a United States senator. Almost none of that nineteenth-century fabric is what people are calling about. The calls come from houses built in the last twenty years, on the streets that run out toward Beaverbrooke Park and North Pointe Park, with poured walls, a rough-in stub for a bath, and a basement nobody has touched since closing.

The wrinkle in Grimes is a number rather than a rule. The 2020 census counted 15,392 people here, and Iowa Code section 103A.10(2)(d) makes the state building code applicable in every city with a population over fifteen thousand that has not adopted a local building code substantially in accord with a nationally recognized standard. Grimes crossed that line between censuses. Iowa's state code, at rule 481-301.8 of the Iowa Administrative Code, adopts the 2024 International Residential Code. So the first question on any Grimes basement is not what it will cost. It is which code book the plan reviewer is holding.

Two Counties, One School District, and a Basement Stock Barely Fifteen Years Old

Grimes grew from 8,246 residents in 2010 to 15,392 in 2020 - a gain of 7,146 people, or roughly 87 percent, in a single decade. The American Community Survey's 2024 five-year estimates put the city at 16,366 people in 6,224 housing units, with a median age of 35.4, median household income of $120,037, and a median home value of $304,700. Read those four numbers together and the basement picture writes itself: a young city, high earners, and a housing stock where most of the unfinished basements sit under houses poured in the last fifteen or twenty years. That is a favorable starting point. Poured walls, modern footing drains, and a mechanical layout that was drawn after 2005 all mean fewer surprises behind the framing than a Beaverdale bungalow would hand you.

The city straddles a county line, which is the detail people forget. Part of Grimes sits in Polk County and part in Dallas County, and the Dallas Center-Grimes Community School District draws students from both. Iowa 141 crosses the central half of the city and Iowa 44 runs along 1st Street, which is why the newer subdivisions ring the edges rather than infilling the middle. The county split matters mainly for where records live and which county assessor's file your house is in, not for who inspects the work - the city runs its own building department. What it does change is the paperwork trail when a house changes hands, and it is worth knowing which side of the line you are on before you start pulling documents for a permit application.

See Grimes, IA on Google Maps — we cover the whole area from Des Moines.