About where to Grow

I've been reading these boards for the past month or so daily for a hour or two while having a nice smoke and have decided to finally take a stab at the art of growing. I live in a house with my girlfriend, we got the house about a year ago after her parents died in a terrible car accident. After the past year we have both started to get back to a normal life so we have decided we should start growing instead of buying bags every other day now that we have that extra free time. So after searching/reading many many posts, links from posts i've pretty much figured out the basic setup you need. I have noticed almost everyone here grows either outside or inside in a grow box like a dresser/cabinet, etc. The question I have is if you grow inside does it need to be in a grow box, or a sealed off room? The reason I ask this is because the only real spot we can grow in our house is in the crawlspace in the basement because we always have people in/out the house. The crawlspace is close to 4ft in height and pretty much unlimited in width. Now I was wondering would it be possible to grow/have a good grow in this area with out making a grow box to put back there because that would be a extreme amount of work seeing how the crawlspace entrance is about 3ft off the basement floor and isnt a very big entrance at that. So i guess im asking if i were to put plants back there with all the necessary tools for growing would they be able to grow in this type of open space that isn't sealed off?

As long as you provide them a decent growing medium, decent lighting, and adequate ventilation, they should grow okay. You may want to tack up some black/white poly or mylar around the area you will really be using, to reflect light back onto the plants rather than letting it hit your crawlspace walls and be absorbed uselessly.

Also, since you have company over frequently, you'll pretty much have to have a carbon filter to get rid of the smell. This will probably be your biggest problem, because without sealing it all into a room or a grow cabinet, the smell might tend to expand throughout your crawlspace and then upwards into the rest of the house.

You don't have any rooms at all upstairs, that you can reasonably come up with a reason to keep company out of? If you can use an out-of-the-way room then I'd build a cabinet or two and keep them out of sight in that room.

First off, thank you for the reply....
I think I should be able to give it a decent medium on the lightning, my biggest worry is about the ventilation, crawlspaces don't seem like the best area in the world to grow but doable but then again I have no idea why I asked....
About this carbon filter how do these work? Would I just place them on the ceiling around the vents that go to higher floors? I remember someone posting a url(will link at the bottom of the post) for a ozone generator air maid would something like that work? Or would I just be better off with a carbon filter? About not using upstairs with a grow box...thats really what I'd like to do in the near future, but atm theres really not alot of room, still have alot of unpacked boxes and currently don't really have a nice grow box or wood around. Would like to get one of them closet type setups from lowes/home depot when the money allows it. The link for the ozone generator is http://www.kalyx.com/store/proddetai.../2740/file.htm