Finishing Basement #1: The build out project so far

Since I joined up on the LumberJocks side of the site, I wanted to take a few minutes and post a progress on my basement build out here.

First off a quick info about myself.
My daytime job is in IT for a small family owned business. I support their infrastructure (servers, workstations, laptops, printers, cabling, etc.). Pretty much everything I get my hands on. I am a jack of all trades and master of none :).

Doing wood working and any DIY stuff around the house allows me to blow off the mental stress of my job. Plus it makes me look tougher when I get cuts and bruises around my hands, which unless I’m working on an older PC case doesn’t really happen often in my profession.

I am married and have 2 beautiful young children. This of course makes things challenging when trying to hammer stuff around the house and they are already sleeping.

Over the years I have picked up tools here and there during projects. I always have to tell my wife that initially the project will be a bit more expensive, but that 3 or 4 projects down the road we will get our money back. That’s how I justify getting new tools and for the most part it works!

My current project is the basement build out. About 660 sq.ft of entertainment area (pool table, foosball table, poker table, ping-pong table). The theme will be that of Ancient Egypt (to match my Home Theater room that is located in the basement already). Colors were picked from a material that I’m using in my HT room for the sound absorbers. Here is a quick shot of the material:

I am about 90% done and looking forward to the finished stage.

1. Framing – DONE
2. Electrical – DONE
3. Plumbing – NO NEED
4. Insulation – DONE
5. Drywall Hanging – DONE
6. Drywall Patching/Sanding – DONE
7. Primer/Paint – DONE
8. Drop Ceiling – DONE
9. Lighting – DONE
10. Flooring – In Progress
11. Floor Molding – Pending
12. Builtin Cabinet/Bar – Pending
13. Finishing touches – Pending
14. Grand Opening – April 10th!

I started this build out in October of 2009. Been doing little work here and there as $$ is available for the materials. I consider this project to be my most ambitious. The only 2 things that were done by others were the drywall patching/sanding and the stucco finish. The rest was all DIY.

I am now at the flooring stage. After looking in to a few ideas (ceramic tiles, DriCore or Delta-MS+carpet/cork flooring) of what we want for the flooring, we (wife and I) decided to go with VCT tiles. The number one reason is that it’s way cheaper ($$) than any other option we looked at. This basement area is pretty much 99% for entertainment and I think VCT will do just fine against accidental spills and what not. Another reason is that we can mix the VCT tiles and make some kind of a design on the floor.

I do have one question as to what is best used to fill the concrete control joints with? VCT will show any imperfections in concrete which I am aware off. The house was a new construction, so the floor is in excellent condition with just few minor settling cracks. I need to fill those up as well. Any tips would be appreciated.

Right now my wife added a bit of pressure to get this thing wrapped up. She sent out invites to our friends for my birthday/basement warming party on the 10th of April!!! I think I will be taking a day or two off from work to get this done in time. Anyways enough of rambling. Here are a few progress photos of the project.