The room that AVS built - help me decide what to do with the other 'half' of my room.

A while ago I started a thread (in my signature) about finishing my basement. I made a couple of mistakes when doing that, notably putting it in the wrong forum (dedicated home theater). Our basement isn't a dedicated theater really in any way other than there's a theater area but beyond that it belongs in the Theater/game room forum. So I thought I'd start a new thread but the motivation isn't because I'm dumb (the wife would disagree) and put it in the wrong forum, rather it's because I don't know what to do with the remaining space that isn't designated for movie viewing. So I thought I'd ask.

To that end I'm looking for input. I'll give you the room dimensions and I'm looking for suggestions of what to put in. I'm open to just about anything (not a hot tub) and any suggestion. As I've been working on the one portion of the space where the theater goes, I've had decent ideas about what I want to do in that area (though questions remain) but the whole time I haven't really had much in the way of thoughts about the other side. Fireplace? Maybe. Wet bar? Sure, ok. Pool table? I dunno. So I'm looking for the bright minds of AVS to participate.

I'll post more pictures later, but to start here's a general schematic:



The space in question is on the upper left and is 13' 6" x 17' approximately. Ceiling height won't be great, maybe 7' 6". So that's what we have to work with. I'll get a picture up later on today or tomorrow of it.

In the above diagram the bathroom will be in the bottom left corner (blue space 6' 6" x 8) so I also have a small area in front of that that flows into the space mentioned above, giving me another 7 x 8 (56 sq ft).

The L-shaped rectangle at the bottom extending all the way to the right is utility/storage space.

The blue space in the upper right corner is an office.

The three little blue squares are teleposts (grr).

The theater area falls between the office and the space in question and is roughly 11' x 19' or so. I haven't built in the stage yet, as I'm putting a little shelving in yet prior to that. I need to do that to balance out the appearance of the front of the room as there is a little area where the electrical box appears on the right side. That makes no sense at this moment but I'll Google Sketchup something to show you what I mean. Or maybe just a picture.

I'll do the stage up properly and it'll end up about 4' deep in total and be about 7' wide. I'm contemplating making a smaller, separate platform for the sub that will be hidden in the shelving to the right of the stage, though I'm not sure if the smaller platform, when filled with sand, would be sufficient for the sub to sit on?

Equipment for the A/V portion of the room will be as follows:
Sharp 80"
speakers: Boston Acoustics VS336/VS260/VS325C/VPS 210 and will add either two or four more surrounds +1 sub for 7.2 or 9.2
Receiver: currently leaning in the direction of Marantz SR6007 or Yamaha RX-A1020 but may move to 9.2 versions
Blu-Ray" will be purchasing Oppo BDP-103
XBox 360 currently

So, there's a brief run down of what's there. As mentioned, I have a preceding build thread but haven't posted to it for a while. Consider this sort of a re-boot in the Star Trek style of things.

Who wants to play along? I need suggestions and ideas. Please help.

Ah well, best laid plans...

A few days late, but here's some recent pics. Some drywall work done compared to the old thread and a bit of painting but we stopped painting because I changed up a bit of things and a bit more drywall work will need to be done.

So, here's the theater area. As mentioned, about 11 x 19 (WxL) and we'll have three theater seats at about 11' from the screen. I'll put a mini-table/bar thingy behind the theater seats with another 2-3 stools there. A love seat on the left between the teleposts and a couch on the right, so should be able to seat about 11 in the area though not all seats will be great for watching movies.



On the right you can see the electrical box and that cubby hole will be about 38" wide and 18" deep. I'll put a door on there to close it in. For aesthetics I'll put a similarly sized shelf over to the left side, roughly 'behind' the telepost.

Looking the other way in that room, essentially from the screen wall you see this:



The back wall where the boxes are stacked will end up with shelving for all our DVDs and CDs.

The grey color in the pictures on the walls is the actual intended wall color. The lower area will be a dark blue (Winnipeg Jets blue) so the theme is going to look awfully close to BigMouthinDC's theater. I wanted to go with green but was showing the boss/wife pictures and she said no to green and just go with the scheme that Big has. Color me a copy cat but I swear it's not my fault.

The area I need help with is the other side of the basement and as mentioned above is 13'6" x 17 with a 7 x 8 jog that leads to the bathroom.

Several views for you (yeah, I need to clean up the crap on top of the air hockey table):

Looking at the space from the bottom of our stairs




The space from standing in the jog leading to the bathroom (note one window at the end)




Looking toward the jog at the back corner. Not real helpful I admit, but you can at least see where my audio rack will be.



So, help me out please. Suggestions, comments, criticisms. Witty jokes, limericks, just say hello, tell me what you like to drink.