Basement Project - Week 2

Making big progress now. I have slacked on getting this updated, mainly cause I lost my camera for about a week. Found it though (unfortunately, cause it suxs) and have taken some new pics. One of the big things that was done was installing the 3-sided fireplace. They couldn't get in the basement cause of the small area at the bottom of the stairs. So they had to tear down the wall. Now ordinarily this would be a problem, but we had already planned on opening up the left side of the stairwell. So it just got done a little sooner than expected. The plumbing lines have been run, electrical has been started, and framing is basically done except for some smaller things. They ran all of my speaker, coax, and cat5 wiring into a nice Levetron AV box. Here are the pics

Here is the opening that was made so when you walk down the stairs, it opens to the basement.

Here is the 3-sided fireplace. Covered to protect it but it looks frickin great!

Looking down at the bar, there will be a pool table in this view when everything is done.

This is looking at the bathroom. There will be a plasma on the wall where the orange tube is so that you can swing it towards the lounge area or the pool table.

This is looking towards the media room and bar.

Looking into media room

Here is the raised floor for the media room

Here is my Low voltage wiring panel and my Electrical Sub panel

This is where all the speaker cables go to and my smurf tubes for running future wires to the tv's. All the AV components will be here.

Looking down the room as you come down the stairs. Big art niche to the left will have something in it.

Basement Project - Day 5

Well for some reason our camera appears to have taken a turn for the worst. It doesn't take very good pictures in the dark now. If you use the flash, it looks like there are a hundred water spots on the lens. So I took the latest pics without the flash and most of the pics are blurry.

So looks like its time to replace this damn thing. Anybody want to buy a used Konica Minolta?? I'll get you a great deal...well maybe I'll just sell it on ebay. Good way to get rid of our crap!!

The framing is getting close to being completed. They are starting to work on the sofets which will give us a great looking ceiling. The heating ducts have been run and they also were able to remove some pipes that weren't needed in the bar area. Here are the latest pics, please excuse the quality of them.

Lounge Area

Damn dog...

Entrance to the bedroom

Standing at the bar looking down towards the lounge...man these pictures really suck

Entrance to bathroom on left and hvac room in middle

Media Room

Bar Area (All pipes are gone)

Basement Project - Day 2

Well the second day of construction has come and gone. It's now actually starting to take some shape. That's good because I was getting real tired of just looking at concrete all the time. The dogs really hate the construction and can't quite figure out what the hell is going on. I'm sure the contractors are getting tired of the barking every time they fire the nail gun.

Hmmm...maybe they will let me fire the nail gun!! I might just have to ask them if I can. Then I would feel like I helped build the basement, heck I could even tell people that I BUILT the basement. Okay that wouldn't be right, but I could at least say I helped, sort of.

Well they started framing the bathroom and the media room. Once I saw the frame for the bathroom, I noticed that where the vanity was supposed to go was a little small. So we are going to have to move the location to a different wall. This will actually work out better though and give people some more room to wash their hands and get ready. Otherwise we might have had some nice holes in the wall from peoples elbows.

Well here are some pictures of the basement so you can get a good before look at it.


Bathroom - that little wall in the right corner is where the vanity was supposed to go but now it will be on the wall that hasn't been built yet in front.


Media Room - This will have an arched half wall on this side and the wall when you first walk into the room. This will allow people to see the tv from the bar.


Bedroom - Will have glassed french doors so that the light will be able to come in from the window.


Bar - Its hard to picture but this is where there will be a U-shaped bar.

Well that at least gives you an idea. I'll take better pics when the frames are all in.

Basement Project - Day 1

Well today is Day 1 of our little project. We are finishing our 1700 sq ft basement which will double the size of our house. The great thing about this, besides the space, is that I now get to create my perfect ManLand! I was worried that this project was going to cause problems between us. She would want to put a bunch of foo foo stuff down there and ruin my vision of the perfect basement!

I'm glad to say that it hasn't been that way at all. We have actually been on the same page for almost everything. She even made a suggestion the other day that instead of having one of the art niches hold a picture, maybe it would look good to mount a flat screen tv there. I just about fell off of the couch. She made me so proud :-)

Anyways, we have been planning this basement pretty much since we bought the house in June and now it is finally starting. I'm going to put the CAD drawings on here if I can. They are pretty big though. Pictures will be going up tomorrow of the first day, so I can look back and be amazed at how it all came about. I have done plenty of research on this so I will try to post links to great sites that I have found for all different areas of basement finishing. Here is a link to the contractor that is managing the project for us http://www.dbestbasements.com His name is Dan Best, great guy.