Basement Poker Room & Home Theater (6 Viewers)

Drywall mud and sanding are DONE. Big thanks to @DoubleEagle for the hand sander vacuum recommendation, it worked great to do the rough sanding, then I used drywall sponges for final smoothing and removing any scratches from the screens:

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Cut the dust by at least half, probably more, and the final product looks like it came out pretty good (reserving final judgement until after the primer/paint goes up), thanks again!

I also got two of the four doors installed, I have one more of the pre-hung doors for the water meter closet, then I have a custom frame to make for the access to the furnace (too short of a door for a pre-hung option). The door to the backyard *just* fits (height-wise, this was at the lowest clearance spot and was another reason I balked at the drop ceiling), and with the carpet I'll need to hack off about an inch off the bottom. With the doors up it's really starting to look like a complete room now, I'm getting excited to see the "substantial completion" finish line. I've got the carpet guys coming in to measure, and next up is priming, painting, laying down the tack strips. Also going to put up the sound insulation in the ceiling now that the drywall dust is done.

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It's looking great ! Make sure you get the best, extra cushion foam for under the carpet. A cement slab is hard, sometimes even with carpet. It's worth the extra $. So how much time do you spend just looking around at your progress? : )
 
For carpet, I'm going with a basic Stainmaster carpet, IIRC someone here had actually recommended this a while back. I picked up a sample when I went in to schedule the measuring, looks and feels nice:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/STAINMASTE...tical-charm-Textured-Interior-Carpet/50151444

Still thinking on the colors for the walls, I originally was thinking of something in the beige/cream/mocha family, but just about all the rooms in my home are neutral like that, so I'm leaning towards a light slate color. You can't tell from the online pic, but the carpet has some subtle hints of blue/grey that I think will go well together. Something like this:

https://www.behr.com/consumer_ca/ColorDetailView/MQ5-23
 
Given that it is a basement I would lean toward lighter colors especially for walls.

I dont like feeling like im in a dungeon
 
It's looking great ! Make sure you get the best, extra cushion foam for under the carpet. A cement slab is hard, sometimes even with carpet. It's worth the extra $. So how much time do you spend just looking around at your progress? : )

Actually not too much until the last few days, mostly hunting for spackled areas that may need an little more sanding. Once I got the doors hung on Sunday and closed off the site lines to any of the unfinished portions of the basement, it really started to feel like a finished room, and I took a few more minutes to look around and get excited about the prospects of finishing up and playing cards down here again. (y) :thumbsup: I hate drywall and being a good sized room with a ton of details/cuts/corners, the last few weeks have been tedious, I'm glad to have this part of the project finished.
 
Given that it is a basement I would lean toward lighter colors especially for walls.

I dont like feeling like im in a dungeon

Yep, I brought home a bunch of darker slate color samples that looked great in the store, but way too dark once I got them home. The bar will have a red oak finish with a slate tile bar top and the ceiling will be the natural brown color, so I think I've all the colors complemented pretty well. I always prefer to sleep on these kinds of choices for a few nights, it's amazing how on occasion something can look waaaaay different after a few different looks. I have a few days, I'm hoping to paint over the weekend.
 
Water meter closet door up and sound insulation in the ceiling installed. Took some time last night to clean up and clear out, carpet measuring folks should be coming today.

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Reached a big milestone this weekend - primed and painted everything but the stair treads.

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I have to decide what to do with the stairs. My original plan was to paint them, but I told the carpet guy to give me a price for covering them. If it doesn't add too much cost I think I may just do that, help cut down on the noise when the kids come stomping downstairs.

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Next step is some major clean up, my shop has progressively gotten more cluttered as the project has progressed, I need to take a few days to clean up / put away tools and throw away the various leftover /subfloor/drywall/foam/insulation, my wife has been kind enough to put up with it to this point, I don't want to press my luck lol.

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Paint color looks great. Love the lights by the steps. What's up with the ceiling ?
 
What's up with the ceiling ?

Ceiling will be cedar planks between the bottoms of the ceiling joists, supported on quarter round molding, kind of like this:

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I had to maintain the ceiling height to the extent possible and wanted to maintain access to all the water/electric in the ceiling, so I didn't want to drywall it. Depending on how long it take to clean out the shop and when the carpet installation gets scheduled, I may try to get this up next weekend.
 
Just catching up on this thread. Wow! Everything looks great!
 
Looking good!

Personally, I would never put carpet in a house. I grew up in a carpeted house and my first apartment had carpet (which I replaced twice in 10 years before changing to wood). After living in the tropics and spending time in Scandinavia during winter, I don't believe the "it's warmer" thing that people say about carpets. Our previous home had carpet in the bedrooms and only after we were getting ready to sell and all the furniture was removed, were we shocked at how dirty carpet was and despite professional cleaning, I had it replaced anyway.

Our house now has slate/stone downstairs and wood upstairs. I don't worry about animals, kids or drunks any more and it's such a relief. We have several large Central Asian rugs but they're easily replaceable and cleanable.

The only plus side about carpet is that it's relatively cheap and quick to install. Buy once, cry once I say.
 
@Darson - I think winters in Jersey are a hair cooler than Texas ;) I agree with you about carpet in general, our house was all carpet except the bathrooms and kitchen when we moved in, I've ripped it out of all but one bedroom and refinished the hardwood floors underneath and put down the laminate elsewhere. The basements here get pretty cold without it, it makes a big enough difference and is a relatively cheap alternative, and one that's fairly easy to replace.
 
Looking great - can't wait to see the finished product.
 
Had a great weekend making LOTS of sawdust :coffee: I took a break from the basement on Saturday and spent a few hours with the router, making the main cuts for an upcoming poker table.

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Then on Sunday, with the shop now mostly cleaned up, I started on the cedar plank ceiling. This was probably the one element of the room I've been the most nervous about, it's kind of a "new to me" idea in that I've never seen a picture of anyone doing this in a basement, and while the mock up area looked nice, I was still nervous about how it would look in the end. A better description of the idea is the in OP, but basically the idea was to tack small quarter round molding pieces to the bottoms of the floor joints to support floating cedar planks between the joints, effectively creating a ceiling that would:
  • Hide the wires & pipes between the ceiling joists, but allow access to them for maintenance/future work
  • Not reduce the overall clearance (a hair under 7' to the floor)
  • Incorporate can lights
  • Allow for installation of sound insulation, if possible, and...
  • Not look like shit :)
I'm about two thirds of the way done, and it really came out nice:

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The planks come in 8' length, so the approach results in a million cuts. But once I got a work station set up this went really quick, I was able to cut 3 panels at a time.

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The panels are nice and thin at 1/4", which made cutting around the can lights easy. The bottom of my paint can ended up being the perfect template to trace the cut :) I used my scroll saw for the circular cuts.

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And I finished up last night by painting the main drain pipe and the lally columns, I went with this neat "hammered" black paint, they came out looking pretty cool. I may end up painting all the HVAC duct work with this.

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I think your ceiling looks great - the wood is a nice accent. I have used cedar for a few wood working projects and they have come out looking really nice with a gloss poly finish. I would avoid using it anywhere else though (e.g. walls, doors) as it may turn "sauna" unless that's the look you're going for!
 
I think your ceiling looks great - the wood is a nice accent. I have used cedar for a few wood working projects and they have come out looking really nice with a gloss poly finish. I would avoid using it anywhere else though (e.g. walls, doors) as it may turn "sauna" unless that's the look you're going for!

lol on the sauna. It'll just be the ceiling, walls/doors/trim will all be painted.
 
Cedar plank ceiling is a brilliant concept, and thanks to your skills, an excellent execution of the idea. Major kudos, sir -- the end results are fantastic.
 
The ceiling work is AWESOME! Are you going to put anything on the underside of the ducting to finish that off?

I was just talking about this with @thegymkid. The duct is flush with the bottom of the floor joists, I'm thinking of covering this with the planking as well, using a small strip at the ends of the planks and tack that into the joist at each side. It'll be slightly lower than the rest of the ceiling, but I think it'll look OK, and if I ultimately don't like it it's easy to take down.
 

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