Home Theater Design e-Guide:
My "Mini" Home Theater Projecthome theater basement
The saga continues....
Once the framing was complete, my electrician came in and we walked through the area I was finishing. We marked off on the framing studs where I wanted special outlets, whether those were electrical receptacles, light switches, or cable/phone jacks. We also identified all of the places where I was going to have lighting placed. He came back during the same week we met and ran all of the wiring in a couple of days; it's much quicker and easier to do when you're working in an unfinished area like mine. A special note: I did run a couple of strategically placed wall outlets so I could easily plug in my LCD on the wall without having to drape cords down to the bottom where outlets typically are placed.
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My plumber came in roughly the same time as my electrician (actually, they worked on the same day). I'm planning for a future wet bar in the basement and I also wanted to have a bathroom. My basement isn't exactly set up for natural bathroom (it's not a walkout basement with a natural drain). So I had to resort to a reverse gravity sanitation system to pump water/waste through the existing plumbing lines. I'm essentially having to build a "throne" for my toilet since the toilet has to sit on top of the unit. Heck, at least it will be a conversation piece! Check out the pic below. The plumber did all of his work in a couple of days, as well.
Next, I made arrangements with the drywall company to deliver the drywall materials to my house. Three guys and a couple of hours later, all 61 sheets of drywall were sitting down in my basement. These things come packaged as sheets of two and weigh close to 100 pounds. That's a lot of work!
The next day a crew of drywall installers came by to hang the drywall. There were four or five guys in the crew and they were done by noon. This process is extremely messy. There will be scraps of drywall, nails, screws, and dust all over the place. I taped some plastic sheeting up on the entry points into the area I was finishing to keep the dust from circulating throughout the house. I also changed the filter on my heating/cooling unit and it's a good thing I did – it built up with dust pretty quickly.
I was all worried at this stage because of all of the joints and cracks where each piece butted to another piece. I had never looked at drywall prior to the taping/mudding/etc. stage. My father-in-law (who thankfully used to build homes) eased my concerns. This apparently is how it always looks. And, as it turns out, I don't have any issues with seams in the walls or anything like that, so he must have been right! I've included some pics after this stage below.
home theater basement
Back to the story. A one man crew was responsible for all of the finish work on the drywall. He was a really nice guy who must have been in his sixties (he told me he had been doing this since 1959). He did a great job, I must say. On Day 1, he brought in all of his tools and began taping and mudding up the walls, plastering over joints and nails and screws. On Day 2, he came back to sand what he did on Day 1 and apply more mud. Day 3 was a repeat of Day 2. On the fourth day, he came back and applied the thinnest layer of mud, allowed it to dry, and then finely sanded everything down. You talk about a messy process! There's mud slopped around everywhere on the floor, so you don't want to walk around here until it gets cleaned up or you'll be tracking it everywhere in your house. It was a good thing that my drywaller put down this thick and heavy black paper to keep the floor from getting this stuff all over it. It made it easily to clean up because all they had to do was to come back and roll the paper up and toss it in their garbage truck.
My "Mini" Home Theater: Part 3 → My "Mini" Home Theater: Part 4
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