Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  It feels like one of the last holidays that hasn’t been taken over by mega-commercialization, though it could be easily argued that holiday shopping on black Friday has encroached on Thanksgiving.

In some respects it has been a trying year.  Turbulence has been ever present in my work environment, on the political stage, and in the financial markets.  It is pretty easy with the 24/7 onslaught of “information” to feel like everything is crashing down.    So hurray for Thanksgiving, it’s a great time to look at all the things we have to be grateful for.

So here’s what I’m thankful for this year.  For the priviledge of living in the Unites States of America.  For a safe place to live.  For food to eat.  For a job.  For health and health care.  For the warmth of a loving family.  Simple things, things that I sometimes complain about or don’t appreciate fully.  Things that are too easily taken for granted.  But not today.  Today I’m counting my blessings.  Happy Thanksgiving.

First run at building a cabinet

The original theater plan called for cabinets, but we decided to skip that rather large project to get the space usable before the holidays.  So I installed the electronics and everything is now sitting on the floor.  I decided to use some scrap 1/2 inch plywood to make a small cabinet for the receiver, bluray player and power conditioner.

Some quick measurements of the equipment and the plywood showed that the best use of the lumber would give me a cabinet 24 inches high by 20 inches wide by 18 inches deep.  I planned to use my Kreg pocket hole jig to join the pieces.

The end result came out just OK.  It will do the job for now, but it’s not going to win any prizes for pretty.  That’s OK, because I was looking for some experience with the tools and construction methods before I tackle the larger cabinets.  Here are my lessons learned:

• Face joining the 1/2 plywood top and bottom to the sides didn’t work.  The manual said it wasn’t recommended, but I gave it a try.  The material splits.  Glue and brads did the trick.
• The pocket screws held the fixed shelves firmly to the sides, but if you overdrive the screws, it split the plywood and went through the sides.
• I was glad I glued all the joints, since not all of my pocket joinery worked well.  Where I had to back out a protruding screw, I was able to use a brad to hold everything while the glue set.

I spent about 2 – 3 hours working on it Sunday.  It seems sturdy enough for 1/2″ plywood.  I’ll see what it looks like after it gets some paint.  If it’s not too ugly, I’ll post a picture

All we need now is some popcorn

The projector is mounted to the ceiling and all the components are connected.  We watched Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl.  It looked fantastic, especially considering it is being projected on the wall and not a screen.

I was anxious to give it a trial run last night, so everything is running as it was set from the manufacturer.  The picture looked great, but the surround sound needs some tuning.  This weekend I’ll tweak the settings a bit.

I was a bit peeved that the Panasonic BluRay player didn’t come with an hdmi cable.  I mean really, 330 bucks for the player and you include composite cables?  It would have cost them less than a few dollars to include the cable.  I would have been happy to pay 333 bucks for the unit with the cable, because I wouldn’t have had to run to the store and spend $30 for one.  Anyway…

I was pretty nervous about mounting the projector, but it all went smoothly.   I bought a Sanus ceiling mount for $89 from ProjectorPeople.  It was relatively straightforward to connect.  It took about 30 minutes to figure out the best way to align the adjustable brackets to the projector, mostly because the mounts on the projector are not symmetrically spaced, which didn’t make any sense to me.  Bolting the mount to the ceiling took less than 5 minutes and about another 30 minutes of adjustment to ensure projector was level and perpendicular to the screen.

So far I’ve spent 5 to 6 hours installing everything.  Seems like not paying the home theater guys $1200 to do the install was a good decision.

Home Theater Speaker Install

More equipment arrived over the last few days.  A Panasonic BluRay player and a Monster Power Conditioner are waiting for installation.

Last night I installed the speakers.  I’m setting this up in a 7.1 surround sound configuration.  All the wire was run before the drywall went up, so the biggest part of this job was to install the four Polk Audio RC80i surround speakers in the ceiling.

The install was really straight forward.  The speakers included a template for cutting the drywall.  Each speaker has four cams to secure the speaker.  I just had to cut the hole, attach the speaker wire, press the speaker into the ceiling and tighten four screws.  Tightening the screws rotated the cams into place and secured the speaker.  The speakers and grills can be painted to match the ceiling, so they will blend right in.

Next comes the installation of the projector.

Rebuilding the Stairs

We bought our house new and the stairs the builder hand built were treacherous.  They were difficult enough for adults and I was sure one of the kids was going to get hurt on them.  There were a series of 10 stairs plus two different landings.  The treads were made from 2×6’s that warped badly, leaving a very uneven rise.  The platforms were built incorrectly, so the rise on them differed greatly from the rest of the stairs.  To boot, you had to reach out over the second step to flip on the lights.

My first plan was to rip them out and have a local stair building company install a pre-built stair case.  The estimate was about $800, so I decided to do some research.

First, I looked up a number of articles on how to build stairs.  I found an article on ThisOldHouse.com that detailed the calculations on how to determine the right rise and run for the stairs.  I did the calculations and measured the existing stringers.  The top stringers were cut correctly, but the warped treads made them very uneven.  The platforms were definitely built incorrectly.  UPDATE:  The article doesn’t appear on ThisOldHouse.com any longer, but I found one here: http://www.bobvila.com/HowTo_Library/Stairbuilding_Basics-Stairs-A1981.html.

I ripped the bottom two platforms out and cut stringers to even out the rise.  I installed them and a stair skirt (fyi, don’t do an internet search on stair skirt without safe search enabled).  I cut risers from 1x pine and bought pine treads for about $10 each.

I was about to prime the whole thing when my wife came home from visiting a model home where she had seen a stained stair tread with a painted riser.  I was very skeptical that the pine treads would look nice stained, but I think it came out well.  The stain here matches the cabinets and is the same stain I used on the bead board under the bar.

I also moved the hand rail to the other side of the stairs.  You can’t see it here, but I added a switch at the top of the stairs to the left of the door so you could turn on the light before entering the stairwell.

I’ve got a lot of hours into this stairwell.  The rebuild was time consuming.   The finish on the stairs was involved and there was a lot of electrical work involved (adding a four way switch, adding a second light, adding three LED lights along the stairwell. In addition, our paint scheme is three colors, which was a lot of work in this tight space.

Refinished Basement Stairs

Landing at bottom of basement stairs

WooHoo! Carpet is in!

New carpet in the recreation area

The carpet went in yesterday.  It looks and feels great! And the basement is very usable now.    In other news, the first batch of the home theater equipment arrived.  Lots of unpacking, manuals to read, and installing.  Should be exciting.

Arrival of the home theater equipment

New carpet in the media room

Weekend Recap

Saturday was soccer day for our family.  My daughter had a tournament in the afternoon and then another game in the evening on the field of local professional soccer team, under the lights.  The weather was cold, windy and wet all day.  Regardless, the game on the pro field under the lights was pretty cool.  The girls had a riot.  A bad head cold has ensued today – poor kid.

After a day in the cold wet weather I was really looking forward to sleeping in.  At 7:20am I was awakened by a call from the Sears delivery team.  In 45 minutes they would arrive with the new refrigerator.   We groggily crawled out of bed, emptied the old fridge and cleaned everything up.

The delivery team was great.  The old black fridge made its way to the basement and the new stainless one settled into the upstairs kitchen.  The doors on the new fridge needed to be removed to get in the front door so the process took a little longer than expected.  But good results – No damage, everything working as it should.

I built the base for the cabinets on either side of the fireplace.  I primed the cabinet over the breaker boxes, but it still needs paint.  No paint around the fireplace surround either.  Both rooms have  been cleared for carpet.  Looks like the plans for the weekend were a bit ambitious.

Tomorrow is carpet day.  Should be picture worthy.

Projects for This Weekend

Carpet is getting installed on Monday so there are a few things that I need to get done this weekend.  Here’s what the media room and the recreation room look like now:

Media room before carpet install and equipment install

Fireplace Before Carpet

I’m planning built-in cabinets and bookshelves to flank the fireplace.  Saturday will largely be occupied by my daughter’s last day of soccer for the Fall season, so there isn’t much time to build, finish, and install the four base cabinets.

So my plan is to just build a level base to install the cabinets on.  That way the carpet installers can finish the job on Monday and I can come back to the cabinets as time allows.

You’ll notice that the paint around the fireplace surround has an outline of a mantle that I’ve yet to build.  My wife found a mission style mantle in “This Old House” magazine that we really liked.  I transferred the design to the wall to make sure the proportions looked right.  I’ll commit the measurements to paper and paint around the tile so it looks more finished.

If that all goes smoothly, I’ll prime and paint the doors I built to hide the breaker boxes and snake of cables that I’ve yet to connect.

We’ll see how I make out after the weekend.  Wish me luck.

Doors over Sub-Panels

View behind the doors

The Kitchen and Bar

Here’s a look across the bar into the kitchen.

Kitchen and Bar

Our design evolved for this space as we went.  We wanted a bar and sink.  And a refrigerator.  The sink placement was fixed because of the placement of our plumbing.  We decided on a full kitchen when we decided to add natural gas for the furnace and it wasn’t any more expensive to add another gas drop for a stove.

The bar and kitchen counters are topped with granite. The cabinets are from Wellbourn and feature a mocha stain.   Both the granite and the cabinets were professionally installed. Everything else is my work.

The bar is in a walk way through the kitchen, so it is important for the bar stools to slide under the bar.   My wife found these and the brackets for the bar top in a local decorator store.  We installed and stained the brackets and the bead board to match the cabinets.

Behind the bar is a single bowl stainless steel sink with a garbage disposal.  To the right of the sink is a dishwasher.  The faucet is from Kohler.

All the appliances are going to be black to match the granite.  We’re going to get stainless appliances for our main kitchen and move the black appliances we currently have down stairs.

The floor is a 20″ by 20″ porcelain tile that I installed.  They are heavy, especially after installing 450 square feet.

Lots of lighting in here.  There are recessed lights as well as under cabinet lighting.  We’ve wired for pendants over the bar, but haven’t selected them yet.  There are also switched outlets above the cabinets for rope lighting.

Home Theater Equipment is on the Way!

The media room in the new basement is the one feature that everyone is most excited about.  This weekend we went out and tried out theater seating.  After shopping at a few stores and reclining in a lot of chairs, we picked four chairs in a straight formation from Berkline.

We opted for a higher end chair that doesn’t have any power.  It is really comfortable and looks and feels well built.  Plus I wasn’t that excited about running four power cords across the floor as the seats are not adjacent to the wall.

Equipment selection has been stressing me out for a while.  When we were roughing in the room we had a sales guy from one of the local home theater stores come out and give us some advice and a quote.   Nice equipment, but it was a little pricey for my budget, almost $12000.  Since it included about $1200 in labor I decided to tackle it myself.

So, with budget in mind, here’s the equipment selection: