The man cave/scotch lounge

2 cans of paint - $59
4 Ikea bookshelves - $325
misc. hardware and lighting - $250
custom cabinet work - a day's worth of sweat equity

Having a new haven in the basement - priceless


The slideshow gives you an idea of how I have transformed the basement over the past year or so. The original owners used the basement living space as a play area for the kids - why should I be any different?

So the truth be told, one of the factors for buying this particular house, was the presence of a basement living space that could be set up for home theatre. It was supposed to be a bit of a longer term plan, as I had designed the upstairs TV area with full theatre surround (5.1) capability. But the wheels were spinning, and a google, here, and a click there, and I was sold on putting a front projection system in the basement living room.

Actually, I had sold myself on a cool Optoma H31/screen combo from Costco, but then a buddy of mine told me that another co-worker in Calgary was selling one of his two projectors (long story). So for only $650, I was able to get a pretty decent projector and a ceiling mount. Add a 92" screen from Costco for only $239, and I'm doing big screen theatre for under a grand!

Ok, so I already had a pair of Bose 301s from 1979, a pair of Bose 201s and a Polk Audio centre, the Denon receiver and a DVD recorder (need the tuner to watch TV). The cool thing about the Denon receiver, is that it can do component video switching, which makes cabling and user interface much easier. Purists would say to run the signals separately, but the neophyte can't see the difference. Besides, what are you going to compare it to?

One of the reasons why this room works so well as a home theatre, is the acoustics. Any engineer understands the wave properties of sound, and the behaviour of a a wave as they hit solid objects. I won't get into the physics of standing waves and their cancellation effects; essentially audio sounds great when you have a room with the right dimensions. All the fancy home theatre mags talk about building your room to fit the acoustic dimensions shown right - I just got lucky. With a height of 6' 6", 11' wide and a little over 14' long, it is almost exactly the right ratio to match what is called Sepmeyer's golden room ratio (in my case, Room C). All I know, is that without anything fancy, the sound is awesome down there. I also swapped my little 8" Yamaha sub with the bigger 10" Harman Kardon from upstairs. Needless to say, Christine has to flick the lights from the top of the stairs to get me to turn it down :)

Since the room was finished already, but when I put down the new laminate flooring (for the upcoming addition of our new puppy) I was able to hide the wiring for the rear speakers and an additional Cat 5 ethernet run. The last, best thing for the home theatre setup, was a Logitech Harmony remote. It's the coolest thing to replace the 5 remotes that I needed to run the complete system... and it can all be operated by menu-driven commands. Very cool.

Having the home theatre in the basement is great, and we have been watching lots of movies down there. However, the room was kinda weird. I had a big tube TV in the corner; because of it's size, I had the leather club chair on the wrong side of the room. After browsing through many home theatre web sites, I found that all the designs were geared towards using the room as a theatre 100% of the time. I didn't want rows of seats, but rather a room that was inviting even when the big screen isn't in use. I was flipping through a home reno mag, I came across this basement design shown left. I didn't have room for a fireplace (would have been nice), but I liked the idea of keeping the brown wood accents. It would be nice to have a wet bar and all the cool stuff that is shown in the example, but the kitchen is only a few steps away, so I don't really need it. But this room was pretty close to the look of mine, and gave me the inspiration I needed.

The basement was probably finished sometime in the 70s, and the doors, mouldings and windows were stained and finished medium brown. I already had a medium brown entertainment unit, and a coffee table that roughly matched. So after a week or two of pondering the design, I came up with an open bookcase surround for the screen. I figured it would "finish" that end of the room up - it was a haphazard collection of stuff that needed organising.

The 24" tube TV that Bob gave me had to go. It was on the wrong side of the room, and it forced the leather club chair to the right. That made it kind of awkward, as it sat in front of the couch - not even close to a conversational angle. So by getting rid of the tube, it allowed me to put the club chair on the other side, and make much better use of the space. I picked up a cheap ($300) LCD TV for watching the Simpsons (or anything but Survivor) while Chris is taking in America's Top Model upstairs.

1st year behind us...

Here we are, sometime in the late winter 2006 timeframe, and I finally got around to taking some pics of the finished main floor in daylight. As you can see, there's plenty of room to manoeuvre in the kitchen now, and with the drop cedar ceiling gone, I was able to extend the upper cabinets right to the ceiling. We love the antique British pub table and two chairs that serve as our breakfast sitting area... we picked it up out of the Buy and Sell.


I went with appliances that were clean and crisp looking - the range is a "slide-in" with a smooth black ceramic surface that doesn't disrupt the granite line. The Fisher-Paykel fridge is "counter-depth" - it's not as big as an Amana, but we don't need the space, and it doesn't overpower the kitchen. Since we watch TV in the adjoining room, I chose a mid-range Bosch dishwasher. Sometimes, when we're watching TV, I'll be like, "hey, what is that noise? Is there something going on outside?" Then we'll realize that it's just that the dishwasher is on. A microwave/hood fan combo and a 40-bottle wine fridge round out the kitchen appliances.

I'm glad I built the "Island" (more like a peninsula, really) the way I did. It is where we do most of our day-to-day stuff, and the orientation of the drawers didn't allow for the bar stools to face the other way. When we are entertaining, it is the focal point of the room. On the other side, the "not-so-great-room", as I call it (since the likes of the Rudds, Pulvers and Petters have "great rooms" in their houses, it wasn't fair to call mine equal), we've created a sitting area where we do most of our daily TV viewing etc.

The design concept I had for the bathroom was a hotel-style, a-la Westin, or W Hotel. High contrast, brown on stark white, while retaining a period-look with the Sottini brushed finish faucet and the 1920s train-style towel bars. We found a great mirror at Costco that fit the space above the vanity perfectly, and virtually matched the cabinet colour/finish.

The dining room is actually the only room that was left pretty much untouched, except paint, of course. Christine got me an awesome Art Deco sideboard since these pics, and we've recovered the 1980s print on the dining chairs too.

I finished the mouldings and the fireplace just in time for our open house/Christmas party. I wanted again to retain the 30s look, so I scoured the web for Art Deco fireplace mantles, and came up with something that I could modify to meet my tastes. Since I was going with the white against "Currant Jam" look, it was easy to make the mantle out MDF and create the chevron detail (hard to see from the pic). I went for a gas fireplace insert, as I know from past experience, that I don't use a fireplace if I have to go out into the cold to cut kindling!

What's next? Not sure... I'm catching up now on the maintenance things that the previous owner never did. I replaced the furnace and water heater over the winter, the roof is next, and of course, more painting. I also spent the winter battling the garage leak issue, but manage to work out an interim solution that should keep me dry until I re-surface it and put in proper flashings and gutters.