Finished for now

The basement is more or less finished for now. I had the final inspection completed back in May with no issues. The only minor suggestion from the inspector was to drywall the underside of the stairway treads as a fire barrier to protect the primary exit path. That should be easy to wrap up and I'll do it later this summer or fall.

I really struggled with building my own shelving. I really wanted to use the opportunity to build exactly what I wanted and nicely finish out the room. Well, with a baby in the house and a hectic summer on hand, I conceded that it just wasn't to be.

I'm not usually a fan or IKEA furniture, but I was looking at their Markor series on their website and was impressed by the finish quality and appearance of the pieces. A selling point for me was that they were manufactured from solid wood and not MDF with veneer finish surfaces. Honestly, by the time I purchased the materials, created & finished the parts, it would have taken me a significant amount of time and most likely cost more money. So we went down to the store in Philadelphia and after seeing them in person, decided to go with several pieces.

We purchaed an end table, a storage unit, two bookshelves and a TV stand. I was incredibly impressed with the packing efficiency and with so little dunnage, how they were able to protect the finished surfaces from scratching & damage during shipping. All the pieces were very easy to assemble and the fastening methods were effective and didn't come across as being "cheap"

Here's all the pieces in boxes as purchased.


The end table components.

End table box & packing.

Finished end table.

Storage Shelf packing

Storage Shelf pieces

Finished storage shelf

TV Stand packaging

TV stand pieces

Finished TV stand

I put together the bookshelves on another day and didn't bother with process pictures. Here's a shot of the bookshelves with the TV stand in the room.

And the storage shelf starting to accumulate toys.

Goals now are to continue to decorate and finish out the room. I have a dart board to create a backmount for and put on the wall along with pictures & the required Guinness poster because it's good for you!

TV and sound system will probably be later this fall or next year.

Trim

I finished the trim almost a month ago, but haven't had a chance to post any pictures. Here's the trim on the stairway. It was a little bit of a challenge because the concrete wall wasn't straight, so there was about a 1/2" of tapering different between it and the stud wall above. I ended up putting a 1x1 angle over the interface, then topped it with the same baseboard cap molding I put on the top of the stair stringer. End result is a nice finished look. The only thing left on the stairway is to paint the handrail and install it.



By design, I created a continuous ceiling line in the high side of the basement, so I could finish it with crown molding. The miters in the corners improved as I went along. All in all, I'm happy with the result. Here's a picture from the bottom of the stairs.

And from the back end of the room.

At the stairway, I ran the crown around the end of the stud wall with a closed return. I made it my last cut, and it looks the best, which is good because it's the one you see the most.

The only thing I have left to do now is go around and fill the nail holes with putty and paint over them.

We've used the basement a lot recently and are very happy with it. It still gets a little chilly down there if you don't have the furnace blower fan constantly on to circulate the air in the room. My theory on that is that all the cold air falls out of the house into this space, along with the slab being exposed to an infinite heat sink. It's not that bad though, and this is in the dead of winter with sub freezing temperatures. I'm sure it will be nice in the summer.

I called 4 weeks ago for my final electrical inspection, and then forgot about it because the township never called back to schedule an appointment. This happened with the rough-in inspection too, so I'll have to call them again this week and see what's going on with that.

The next step for this space is to decorate, plan for a new TV entertainment center and additional shelving to get Owen's stuff off the floor.

Couches

We were browsing around at the Lazyboy Gallery just before Christmas and found this couch and loveseat set on an end of year sale. They are both reclining couches and are super comfy.

Grid Ceiling

I purchased my materials at Lowes and went with a plastic grid system vs the aluminum rails because I thought it looked a lot easier to install, and wasn't that much more expensive. I was right and it was worth it. Cutting the parts is very easy to do with standard shears. I chose Armstrong Home Style 2'x2'x1/2" Tiles. The style number was Brighton 266.

I'm not sure what I was thinking back when I framed the soffit around the duct, but I left the space for the grid ceiling at 6'-4". Oops. This would essentially leave a 1-1/4" gap on either side of three full tiles. If I installed it this way, I would have to cut twice the number of tiles and use a fourth connecter grid. That seemed like a waste of time, so I fought the urge to have everything perfectly centered and installed the grid with three full tiles starting on the back wall, leaving a single 2-1/2" gap behind the duct soffit.

After marking a level ceiling line, I installed the square angle perimeter rail using drywall screws. The main beams I ran across the space so I wouldn't have to create any joint connections along the way.

To make sure they were level I ran two strings across the length of the room located off the bottom of the perimeter rail. Then I just installed the drop wires and tied them off to length when the beam touched the string. I used the simple nail in hooks to connect the wire to. Every other cross beam lined up with a ceiling joist, so I just nailed into them for the drop wires. For the in-between locations, I put a 2x2 nailer between the joists and connected into that.

The cross bars snapped into place in the beams using a rib and detent system. The first one I didn't realize the ribs were even there... after struggling with it for a few minutes I figured it out and the rest of them snapped in easily. Once these were in place, I loaded in the ceiling tiles. Cutting the embossed tiles for the short sections was pretty irritating because you have to manually create the relief so it drops down in the grid. It was tedious, but the finished product turned out nice.

The recessed light fixtures came with tiebars that had connection hooks for drop ceiling grids. This made installation very easy. I just created the circle cutout in the tile, set it in the grid and placed the fixture over it. When I ran the lighting circuits, I put standard outlets above the locations for the lights. So I just terminated the fixture service wire to a plug so I could just plug them in after I installed them. This also makes it very easy to take them out if I ever have to.

Here's the finished product looking down the room, and from an angle. Initially, I was a little concerned with the drop ceiling looking "cheap", but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

HVAC and bouncy steps

For the HVAC, I added standard registers in the wall and tied into the main supply & return trunks. We only have a single air handler, but there was an existing register pushing air into the basement, so I wasn't too concerned about robbing air from the furthest rooms on the circuit. To start, I removed the existing register and patched up the hole in the duct board. I cut in a standard 8" take-off and ran insulated 8" diameter flex duct to a 12x6 register box. I sealed everything off with foil adhesive to ensure no leaks. I ran a single low supply so the heat would enter the room on the floor.


On the return side, I left one stud space without insulation so I could use it as my return chase. So here, I just cut into the wall space and the return trunk with 8" take-offs and connected the two with insulated flexible duct. I only opened up a single 12x6 low return so I would pull cold air off the floor in the winter. We'll see how things go this summer to determine if I need to add a high return to pull hot air off the ceiling. With the AC on in the house, the basement was always comfortable, so I may not have to bother with it.

Here's the return register...

And the supply on the other side of the room.

So far I've been pleased with the performance and the finished space stays very comfortable.

After the drywall was installed, I noticed that the steps were a little bouncy in the middle of the run. To fix this, I fastened some nailers to the wall using Tek screws and screwed the stringer to them. On the framed side, I did the same thing and tacked some nailers on the studs and tied into the strigner...... No more bouncing.

Baseboard Molding & Door

I installed standard baseboard molding around the perimeter of the room to finish off between the carpet and the walls. It was very easy to put it and I didn't have any troubles. I purchased primered composite molding and I was very happy with it. It only required one coat of paint to cover sufficiently and I had no trouble cutting clean edges with a 12" 40 tooth blade.

I planned a 36" interior door into the unfinished section of the basement and purchased it as a pre-hung assembly. I cut the door frame to length so I could screw the top to the header, which was level. Then I shimmed the hinge side square and nailed it in. Finally, I installed the door on the hinges and shimmed the jam side to even the gaps. I installed a standard interior door knob set into the pre-cut openings in the door. It shuts smoothly without binding, so I'm happy.

I finished around the door with standard door casing molding.

My miter saw and brad nailers paid off huge for this effort and made cutting the corner joints and nailing on the molding a simple task.

This was the first time I had a chance to use the brad nailers that were included in the air tool set. I'm very happy with them and they worked flawlessly.

Carpet & other stuff

After talking with some friends and family that had recently purchased carpet we ended up going to Home Depot based on their experience. They have a $199 install fee and a wide selection to choose from. We knew we would be spending a lot of time on the floor, so we were strongly considering the polyester for the softer feel even though it would "shed" for the life of the carpet. Then we found a Shaw branded Nylon product called EverTouch R2X. Basically a Nylon carpet that doesn't shed, but it feels like a softer polyester. We were sold... and it was a rapid install selection as well, so we could have it installed quickly. We ordered it on Friday 12/5, a service came and measured on the 9th, and it was installed on the 18th. The color of the carpet is Sugar Cookie... how can you not love that?

The walls got a little scuffed in spots where the installers were un-rolling the carpet. They warned us that would happen. It really isn't that bad though.... all surface marks I can either wash or paint over. I ran around last night and marked the spots with tape so I can touch them up later.








We went with a waterfall install style on the stairway.

I pre-wired for surround sound speakers, and installed screw terminal wall plates for the speaker hook ups. I used the Leviton "quick port" system. Basically they have open ports in the wall plates and you purchase clip in features depending on what you want to do.

I installed a new Kiddie AC/DC smoke detector where the old smoke detector was in the room. It's hardwired and linked in with the rest of the system. When any one detector is activated, all the other detectors sound the alarm.