Andy's Maple Ale Theatre - Page 4

Thanks !

Unfortunately I have lost (read:misplaced) a bunch of photos on the build. Clear sign I have too much on the go right now. I'm also switching jobs at work, both boys have birthdays this month, Mother's Day... yada yada yada.

So here is a bunch of quick update notes to try and catch up:

• Some brutal cable pulling. One long home run had a tight hole so I could only pull it 3" at a time.
• Repurposed some of the existing rough wiring by re-directing it into the storage room to use for the gaming power block and extra light.
• I have a work light at my bench !
• Installed doors on the gaming cabinets.
• Ran music/game room ceiling speaker wiring.
• Running proper LAN cables to upstairs. Sure enough on the last one my steel fish tape got stuck in the wall/ceiling. Left it hanging there for 3 days until I finally gave up and cut it (hard to do!)
• Hanging over a dozen stone veneer samples on the wall.
• Solid core door arrived - installed on furnace room.
• Fixed framing around furnace room door. :-P
• Found used SONY receiver on Kijiji for $20 that I can use to drive the gaming speakers
• based on conversation with drywaller, i extended the walls around the pocket doors to emcompass the jack posts
• hey - now that I extended the walls, I have to add two new plugs to meet code!. Make work make work.
• Mean while my wife is working on stuffing the insulation in parallel to all this stuff. Great to have a helping hand. Our electric knife will never be the same!
• New bulkhead over kids gaming tv. Should have done that earlier - more room to run cable from the epanel.
• Finally finished framing around the electrical panel. I made it match the smaller version of the IKEA cabinet doors on the game cupboards.

more to come. Hopefully with more words !

The LED strip lights I ordered for the stair runners came in the mail! Of course I had to drop what I was doing and plug pieces in.

I ended up ordering RGB 150 SMD strips. You can get 300 SMD, which has twice as many LEDs on the strip, but it was a bit more expensive and consumes a lot more power resulting in needing bigger power supplies etc.

I tried them out and even created a mock up along the stairs. It looks great! Even though I will keep them white most of the time it is nice to be able to change the colours for special occasions. Also, since there are different "whites" this way we can choose how cool or warm we want them to be.

The boys like the "dance mode".

(sadly - the testing pictures are also MIA. Too bad - they were fun).

Other updates:

• built new bulkhead over gaming tv area
• my wife built a mockup of the fireplace corner, complete with cardboard fireplace. She makes me smile all the time. She is also running with narrowing down the selection and getting quotes etc. We are trying different angles to maximize viewing impact, but in the end we are going to stick with plain old 45 degrees. (side note: since gas fireplaces are essentially a luxury market I am amazed at the lack of sales attention that we have found. Stores not phoning back, no attention at showrooms (if they are there at all!). My guess is the main revenue stream is subdivision builders and they just don't care about individuals.)
• rewired bottom of stairs gang box - added a separate "ALL OFF" switch that will kill all lights in the basement.
• Moved the furnace junction box so it was in the furnace room. Since the ceiling is so busy there with all the ducting etc there was no place to anchor it so I had to move it 3ft farther away from the epanel. Thus I needed to pull a brand new home run of 14/2 and remove the old one, and I decided to move the kill-switch to a better location as well. As I removed the old run and made these changes I ran across the typical "in-the-field builder decisions", leaving me grumbling about slap'n'dash building the whole time.

A totally free day today - no other commitments - however it's a late start because we were out drinking and dancing at the local hockey volunteer banquet. I need to start on something low key (NO power tools until the Tylenol kicks in) so I am going to finally plug in my ISY 99i INSTEON controller. (side bar: what kind of name is ISY-99i ??? I mean ... really ? I can never remember it when google searching. How marketable is that ! Unless it's a tribute to Wayne Greztky or something, I just don't get it.)

Up until now I was holding off on doing this because I have been hesitant on installing any electronics in the basement until after the drywall (dust issues). However it dawned on me that I can install this *anywhere* in the house and access it from my laptop via wi-fi.

Installing is the easiest thing. Just plug it into the the wall through the INSTEON modem, and connect to a hub on the house LAN. Done. After that, I can access it from any computer in the house through a default URL or using the IP address. (java required)

Holding my head and laptop I shuffle down to the basement to start playing. Again, it's pretty easy: I press the "start linking" button on the app and I can then go around the basement and press the Set button on any dimmer/outlet that I want it to control. If I want, I can tell it to remember any of the links that I manually created already, but I chose to delete everything and start from scratch. After I identified all the devices the ISY99i initializes all of the devices which took a long time .. about 5-10 min .. which was a good time to get some java of my own.

Once that was done it was all play. Click on any device in the tree and turn it on / off, change the ramp rate, change the max dim levels etc.etc. I renamed all the devices so it was easier to keep track, and now it was time to make some "scenes". Again - intuitive and easy. Create a new scene in the tree, drag all the involved devices into that scene, and specify which devices are 'controllers' (those that start the scene) and which are 'responders' (everything else). I slaved some devices to others, and re-created the virtual 3-way circuit for the stairwell.

Now time for the "ALL OFF" button. Creating the scene was simple - drag every device into that scene. I can even specify different lighting levels and ramp-rates (how fast they fade) for the scene which was very cool. However there was a little trick: Since I wanted the All Off switch to be a nice big button I decided to apply it to the dimmer part of a keypad/dimmer combo (the dimmer wasn't connected to any load, but that doesn't matter for INSTEON - it can still control things). What happened was the scene settings were being over-ruled by the dimmer settings. Once I noticed that, I just changed all the dimmer settings to what I wanted and voila - awesomeness.

Now when I press the All Off button at the base of my stairs, most of the lights fade out fairly quickly, but I have the accent lights (like on the stone wall, the screen, etc) fade out much slower so your last view of the basement is of all the accents. And lastly, i have the stairway light fade REALLY slow (19s) so you have lots of time to climb the stairs and the light will take care of itself.

As crush the turtle says: Awesome.

Can't wait to integrate the stairs running lights and motion sensor. But that will have to wait a bit.

That's good to know - thanks for posting. I'll check it out as we are interested in the Kingsman line.

My wife phoned this one place in Mississauga/Oakville multiple times. After a while it was no longer to get information but as a personal challenge. She gave the guy an earful when she finally got a hold of someone, and in response he quoted her a really good price. Ironically we will probably go with them.

Drywallers are booked! Pressure is on. I am encouraged by the recent drywalling shots of Nick's Homebrew Theatre, but yikes lots of little things left to do.

Now I HAVE to do all those little annoying jobs that I have been putting off for weeks/months on end.

Structured Phone - Phase 1

I am NOT going to re-wire all the phone wire in my house, but all of the new stuff will definitely be structured. And like everything else I am doing in my basement, the plan is to move as much as I can away from the crammed corner where my electrical panel is.

I will be using BIX components, not 66 or 110 blocks, for my structured phone wiring. 66's aren't available in the area, and I don't really like 110. That, and a long time ago I used to work for Northern Telecom. :-)

For phase 1 of Structure Phone I put a small BIX panel near my electrical panel in order to:
- clean up the legacy installation
- connect the cat3 that is running over to the second BIX panel in the middle of the basement.

Wiring up all the basement jacks and the second BIX panel will have to wait until after drywall.

Anyhoo, it went fairly well. I tentatively cut the mess of quick wire connections the original installer did between the legacy house circuits, the security system, and the line out to the street. Once it was all punched in everything still worked ! yay !

What's funny is that whenever I am working on the BIX panels all I can hear in my head is "BIX! BIX! BIX!" from this old installation training video that I saw on youtube. It's done in a funny faux-sports event style, check it out if you have time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9vzAtFBlw

Cheers,

Great weather for the rest of the day so I had to do some garden duty, including the annual sawing down of the 4m tall grasses at the side of the house. It was such a nice day I brought my tools outside and built the ceiling speaker backer boxes outside. These will be placed above the in-ceiling speakers in the south room to reduce noise transmission upstairs. I used leftover plywood from the flooring to build the boxes and plan to line them with some leftover drywall. I then plan to mount them as isolated as I can from the joists. I can't get RSIC RC04 clips readily but I think I can improvise fairly well with some rubber washers and L brackets.

Finished up the ceiling speaker boxes. Lined with leftover 5/8 drywall and mounted in the ceiling using my own creative bracket solution. I have separated the screw-head, L-bracket, and ceiling joist using rubber washers (and a steel washer to spread the screw-head pressure). Is it perfect? No - theoretically there is still probably some small connection point where the L-bracket is resting on the top edge of the screw despite my using the bar code sticker over the holes in the L-bracket to suspend the screw during installation. But overall there is a significant reduction in contact.



Add a slice of Roxul Safe'n'Sound on top and I have myself an installed speaker box x4 !



Speaking of insulation, my darling wife has been helping out by stuffing insulation in the walls and today she finished that part as well. Next part - the ceiling !

Working on lots of miscellaneous stuff in the basement this weekend. All windows were open so I had another great fresh breeze while listening to all of my Beastie Boys albums (in memory of Adam Yauch who recently passed away).

• New circuit for fireplace wall wash light.
• Finished re-building the framing around a large venting stack.
• Closed off an open part near the ceiling to the utility room - gotta keep that sound out !
• Had to lower all the ceiling fixtures (pot light boxes, junction boxes.. you name it) because I didn't install everything low enough to account for the channels between the joists and the drywall. Oops.

The framing around 2 windows is no longer square. Arg! These are part of the original framing done back in 2010, so it has warped somewhat. Spent a good chunk of the weekend trimming, straightening, and re-building parts so it will be good for the drywall.

Other updates - roughly drywalled the corner where the fireplace will go. It is apparently much easier to do this before it goes in, so picked up some sheets and stuck them up. Real busy time as my 8 year old is just turning 9 and has a ball-hockey birthday party Saturday.

Last few upgrades to upstairs before the basement ceiling gets closed off. One cool update is for the kitchen desk. The original builders left a computer-tower sized gap between the wall and the kitchen desk, but there is no power or anything. Kind of useless. The result is a power bar, a mess of wires, and a small computer hiding behind the monitor.



So I installed a plug in the computer bay so I can move the computer off the desk.

But why stop there !

I also punched more holes and installed a keystone plate with ethernet and audio connections (to the distributed audio system). Best part is I added another plate with VGA and two USB ports that runs (via the basement) to another VGA-USB plate right behind the monitor. No wires on the desk !



When I cut the holes in the walls for all of the above, I of course found inside some debris from the original build of the house many years ago. I also found a long drill bit and this:



It's amazing what you find hidden in your walls !

Fireplace arrived this afternoon!

Since I have a space restriction on one side (due to a window) we had planned to see how the unit would fit in before finalizing my plan for framing around it. We might have wanted to have it pushed forward/backward to accomodate. At one point there was both installers, myself, and my neighbour all sketching ideas and possibilities on the floor, grabbing scrap lumber for mock ups.. it was pretty funny.

Overall the fireplace looks great. An expensive last minute addition but I am glad we did it.

Boy am i stiff and tired. Neck, arms, back, legs.

Drywall materials arrive tomorrow and still loads of things to do so I took the day off work to try and get it all done.

• framed around the fireplace. Harder than it sounds because of the tight corner and little pieces.
• worked on list of things that Joe the drywall guy said would be a good idea to do (mods to make side boxes smaller etc)
• framed last window
• helped my wife continue with the ceiling insulation.
• started removing electrical devices and making temp connections so there will be power and light.
• cleaning up the major mess and collection of tools, bits etc.
• moved the table, fooseball table and old rear-pro tv into the storage area.

.. and a bunch of other stuff. Overall I worked 16 hours on the basement yesterday, less a 1 hour break where we took my son out to dinner for his 11th birthday.

"Son, for your birthday this year you get drywall".

It's amazing how much water has passed under the bridge in the last 18 months or so. As I am doing the last touch ups and cleaning up in prep for the drywallers I have come across many sketches and notes about work I did a year ago. (and the odd "what was I thinking when I did this?") I don't know how I was able to do so much when I was so far away from the finish line!

Thanks for the comments !

Drywall materials arrived this afternoon !



Another late night finishing the ceiling insulation, marking special ceiling points on the floor (valve and light locations that I need to pop out later), and all sorts of odds'n'sods.

Today just the main drywall contractor was at the house doing prep and building ceiling boxes. Boy, he is much quicker than I ever would be, and much better obviously. I hung some plastic around the inside of the storage room so that the drywall dust will not cover all of our camping gear (and all of the other junk stuffed in there)

The curved bulkhead is in! The basement is starting to emerge from the designs !

Well it certainly has been a long time since an official update. The basement is still progressing (yes!) but with all the other stuff on the go I never had time to update AVS or I was too tired to spend more time in front of a computer.

To sum up my major distraction over the past 4 months: I was transitioning to a new job (read: doing two jobs at once) when another manager quit so I had to cover until there was a replacement (read: doing 3 jobs at once) which ended up taking 4 months to fill.

I did jot down some notes from time to time, so I will try to catch up!

First off, I found some photos that I never posted:


Although I lost most of the pictures of my stair lighting test, I did find this ONE picture that you can see the test in the corner...



Lighting test before fireplace installation. (I used a sheet of drywall to simulate the non-existing fireplace wall so I could place the pot-light in the correct place)



and the LAST PIECE OF FRAMING ... around the new fireplace!

a few more left over images:

My main workstation during the majority of the build, here showing my different electrical plans.
It was great to see lots of items being crossed off the big TO-DO lists instead of being added.



The electrical plans were always changing and being updated as things progressed:



My pretty wiring at the subpanel !



and my pretty wife helping out by stuffing insulation in the ceiling:

(May/June 2012 update)

May was madness. For example: one weekend our drywaller was working in the basement while we also had a go-karting birthday party for my oldest, a visiting family from Ottawa stay over, and a birthday party with the entire extended family over on Sunday.

The neat thing is that the family that stayed with us is my friend Mark who really helped get this whole mess started. I used to work with Mark many years ago and we rarely get to see each other. A couple of years ago we stayed at their house for Canada Day weekend and my wife and kids were quite impressed by his finished basement with projector and as a result I got whole-hearted support to focus on finishing the basement complete with theatre. (it wasn't planned that way - honest ! :-D)

Once Mark found out that I was starting my own HT he encouraged me further (he's always trying to get me to spend money ;-) ) by mailing me a copy of the Disney WOW disk to be used on the new theatre. I have kept that WOW disk in the basement near the radio for the past 18months to remind me of the objective. So props to Mark, and it was good timing that they happened to be passing through town as the drywall is being hung!

By mid-June I had taped drywall and it looks AWESOME.

Progression photos March-June:

From under the stairs:








Standing in front of the screen:







At the entry:







Woo hoo !!
Edited by andymo - 11/27/12 at 2:42pm

Thanks Spaceman! More is coming


OUT DRYWALL DUST !! OUT !!

One extra pano, from the "music corner"

(end of June update)

- did a coating of primer on the wall and a couple of coats on the cieling- ouchy back. Boy - everything sure is very white.
- also picking away at the house lan once in a while. Starting to clean up the wires behind the rack.
- had to buy another amp (kijiji $50 sony 6.1 LOL) as the other one for the house audio was clipping *and had to adjust all my inputs so things are a bit mroe balanced
meanwhilte:
- guests are visiting from PRico. Kid mania, school is out etc.

- built the stage. 18 bags of 20kg of sand. taking forever to dry (only one brand available at our HD)

(July update)

After a week of camping I am back in the basement and the sand is finally dry. Sealed up the stage. Over 800 pounds of sand inside. It feels nice and solid when you step up on it.
STAGE DONE.

Working on the riser:
Got the outlet boxes in, and pulled the wire. The led rope lighting was a bit more of a hassle - i ended up combining them all into an extension cord that I plumbed out the back of the riser and into the back room. This way I have access to the Insteon pllug (instead of sealing it in the riser) in case I need to reset it or something.
Minor beef - the dimming outlet (Outlet Linc) won't turn the LED rope lights completely off. Apparently they don't draw enough load to turn the dimmer all the way off (doesn't make a ton of sense to me honestly). I may have to switch to a on/off switch unit.
Regardless, RISER DONE.





Comin' together ..

Added a new outlet in the little alcove near the back of the room.
Why? A little keg-fridge appeared at Costco last June and we ended up picking it up (Happy Father's Day, my beautiful wife said to me) and it is going to fit just nicely in the little alcove that we really didn't know what to do with. Putting the plug in AFTER the drywall was not as easy as before, but it worked out okay. It also forced me to rebalance some of the ccts and enable me to move the condensate pump plug onto the same cct as the furnace.

Fits great !

(August update part 1)

First week of August - finished the coat of primer (borrowed fancy ladder for hard-to-get-to spots). Then painted the ceiling. My eyeballs were going crazy painting cloud-white over primer-white !

With the ceiling painting done I took out the temporary hanging light bulbs and put the proper flood lights and trim kits in the built-in cans. That way when we paint the colour on the walls the lighting will be as it will be. Snapping everything in didn't take long, except ... hey ! ... one light did not come on! It was working before !!!

I changed the bulb, tested the socket, tested power to the socket, etc. etc. Eventually I found the problem was quality control at Cooper industries and it was impressive that it was actually working for a short period of time.



The wire break was right at the entry cable, so too short to splice. Boy was I bummed - the paint is barely dry on the drywalled ceiling and now I have a built-in recessed light fixture that needs to be replaced.

But boy was I pleasantly surprised and impressed as I started disassembling the unit from the 5-inch hole in the ceiling.



The main can slid right out, and when I looked inside - Lo ! A SECRET BACK DOOR to the connections box that is revealed when you take it apart from the inside !




I happened to have an extra housing, so I took that apart and used those parts to replace the bad one. All working again !!
(bonus - I didn't have to fix all the wire cuts I made during the testing)

(Third week in August.)

For our 18th anniversary, my wife and I painted the basement. :-)

In-laws came over for a two-day painting party. They and my wife painted during the day while I was at work, and then I joined them in the evenings. It's all looking great.



Officially the colour is called "Greige" (gray-beige). It slightly changes colour depending on the light. Sometimes it is nice a gray, sometimes it has a slight olive tone to it.

I installed two of the ceiling speakers to provide more music to my painting crew. They look great !



Aug 15 - Painting done ! and the countertop arrived and now is waiting upstairs.