Greedo's Cantina - Page 3

Just ordered a ton of rigid foam and plywood, some drywall (for layering in between the joists) and a new compressor and nailer. I hope to have all the walls covered and the floors finished by mid March, and then start on some of the framing before my egress window gets put in. A bit excited like a kid in a candy store.

GG is ordered and on the way...

Some new fun toys arrived today. Taught my girls how nailers and compressors work. They're not as thrilled as I am.

For my surrounds, I plan to use in-wall speakers. Do I need to build any type of box for these? One will be against the foundation wall, the other in a double wall. That's the one I'm primarily worried about.

A lot of plywood and insulation to move. I'm definitely paying someone to move the drywall to the basement when that gets delivered...

As long as I can build some slide for tossing it down the stairs, I won't mind the sand so much.

A productive Saturday. Moved the rest of the junk out of our basement into the garage, Got all the walls covered with rigid foam insulation, foamed all the seams, and even managed to get my cable/sat dish crap on a demarc panel. Spent too much time running to big box stores, but it needed to be done. Tomorrow I plan on getting the subfloor started, and hopefully 50% or more completed.






And my demarc panel:

Completed all my wall insulation, and started on my subfloor. Didn't get 50% done like I planned, but made good progress. My carpenter is coming on Tuesday to build the new stairs, so I need to clean up so he can work. Luckily the entire basement is cleared out, except for tools and subfloor materials. Now I just need to hear back from the two plumbers for their bids on my bathroom rough in.

Got my GG delivered, and put some more subfloor down.



The subfloor going in where I'll have a bedroom and a craft room:



And looking into the HT room towards the screen:

Oh, and I don't remember who recommended a rotary hammer for drilling tapcon holes, but it was the best advice I've been given so far. It went through my concrete like butter.

Look Ma! No stairs...



Wish he would hurry up, I've got work to do!

Someone asked how I did my insulation. For most of the walls, I used 2" XPS, glued up with PL300 foamboard adhesive. This stuff cures pretty quickly, but I still had to lean some stuff against the panels so that it got good adhesion. Once it was solid, i used Great Foam door and window sealer to fill the gaps and voids. Then housewrap tape to seal the edges. For some of the walls I used 1" to minimize the loss of floor space. For my subfloor, I'm using 1" XPS, taped and sealed the same way. Then I'm putting 1/2" ply in two layers. The first layer is tapcon'd through to the concrete, the second layer just secured with drywall screws. I left about 1/8" gaps between the plywood for expansion. The XPS on the walls was square edged, but the 1" panels were T&G. That made it a bit easier, though I still had to tape the seams (OCD runs strong in me. The fact that some of my panels are "upside-down" is really annoying).

When the weather warms up a bit, I'm going to pull out my fiberglass bats in the rim joists and put in spray foam that I got from Sprayfoamdirect.com. Originally I had planned to used XPS cut for each joist, held in by Great Stuff. But that was going to be a huge amount of work, and not as good from what I could see as using the spray foam kit.

Had another idea while I should be ostensibly working; I was planning on a single row of seats (Fusion Jives in an |0|00|0| layout). Un-reclined they take up about 40", reclined, about 71". Four seats is fine for our family, but I was exploring the idea of putting in a small counter and barstool behind the seats. This would move the front seats up about 40" or so, but there'd still be 5 feet from screen wall to the front edge of the unreclined seats. Is that going to be too tight? I don't want to stick 10 gallons of crap in a 5 gallon sack... When I get home I'll try to come up with a drawing to better illustrate it.

Has anyone tried to squeeze a counter in such a short theater? Obviously this would have an effect on the size of the screen I'd select since the prime seats would be about 9' from the screen (screen to eye).
Edited by greedo - 3/8/13 at 11:26am

I plan on a 2.35 screen, and was previously planning on at least a 96" wide screen.

Steve- Thanks for the encouragement. I'm sure I'll get more feedback as my build progresses.

Vanice - How many nails did you drive per sheet? I'm using about 12 tapcons per sheet of plywood. Luckily I'm only using them for the first layer, with drywall screws after that. I may add more just to avoid squeaks!

I used BCX 1/2" ply (really 15/32) using 1/4" 2 3/4 tapcons countersunk into the ply. So far they seem to be holding well.

Been making good progress, though finishing a whole basement just takes so much time. I've got all the walls insulated, the first layer of subfloor down, and almost done with the second layer. The stairs have been rebuilt, and I need to downselect a plumber, as well as bring in another HVAC guy for a quote. I want to get the flooring done by the end of the week, and then starting next Monday I have a week's vacation to use for the basement. That week I'll try to insulate the rim joists, take delivery of lumber for framing up the walls, and hopefully get a good start on some of the walls. I have my egress window being cut the first week in April, and I'd love to have the walls framed and the bathroom roughed in by Tax Day. We'll see.

Yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised how good it looks. A lot of the build that I was going to delay for financial reasons is getting harder to put off since things are going well. I just need to remember to work slowly as I improve my skills so that I don't create irreparable mistakes.

Yeah, I just hammered out the last details with my HVAC guy. He's going to put in two 7" supplies in the front and a single return at the back. I'm not really happy, as putting in a zoned system just isn't affordable. I'd need to have too much work done, plus upgrade my furnace/AC. He talked about putting in a Mits mini split unit, but I didn't like how it was going to look, and the cost was way past what I can afford. I'm going to have him replace our main thermostat with a Nest, and use my iPad (that'll have iRule as well) to control the temps. The rest of the house will just have to deal with the side effects. The HVAC cost for the basement will be around $2K which is more than I expected, but that was because I was just uneducated.