The staircase, at the upper left, essentially splits the unfinished portion, which will be used for storage and mechanicals, from the portion that will become finished.  The wall with the door, at the upper right, already exists but the drywall will be removed and some minor modifications made.  The dotted rectangle running vertically down the middle is a steel beam that exists in the room.  The gray portion of that same beam is where a 2×6 wall will be constructed.

I initially wanted to place the bar in the lower right hand corner.  The plan is to have a sink in the bar which meant I needed to run a drain line to the unfinished portion of the basement.  With the bar placement as shown, I can run the plumbing through the 2×6 wall, which I will construct to span about 1/2 the length of the steel beam, underneath the stairwell and to the existing stubbed in plumbing fairly easily.  There is also a bathroom directly above this location so all I need to do is drop the water lines down the 2×6 wall.  Finally, there will be a nook here, so I can build the full size refrigerator into the bar and it will sit even with the bar back instead of sticking out three feet.

The lower left hand corner will be the television / seating area.  With the bar in its present location, it will also be possible to sit at the bar and watch the television.  The remainder of the room, to the right of the steel beam will all be for the games.  While my collection isn’t big enough to fill it, there’s plenty of room to add the foosball table and plenty more games in the future.  Phase 2 will include a bathroom off the door by the MAME cabinet.

With the initial plan drawn out and the “boss” giving her approval, it was time to get to work!  With my $10 coupon in hand, I headed to Lowe’s and loaded up on lumber.  As of right now, I’ve completed the framing on two of the three exterior walls.  In the plan above, the bottom wall and right hand wall are finished.  Hopefully by this weekend all of the framing will be complete and it will be on to wiring and insulation.

As you’ll notice in the fourth picture, all of the games are covered in plastic to keep the dust off of them. I need to move them all as they are standing in front of the next wall to frame. The cheesy ceiling fans are going and the freezer will be relocated to the storage side of the basement. The foosball table, which is a dust magnet right now and needs to be covered with plastic, will be going on the game side of the finished basement.  I have no idea where the basketball game is going…hopefully not in the finished basement!

To help invision the space a bit better, from picture 1 to 6, you are starting in the upper right corner of the plan and panning 360 degrees to your right.  That’s all for now.  I’ll keep updating as progress is made.  As you can see, for the next few months there won’t be any game related work happening.

The previous owners had painted the foundation walls white and put down some berber carpet but not much else had been done. I wasn’t fond of the carpet so before any construction could begin, I decided to remove it. Unfortunately, the carpet was glued to the concrete floor. I initially thought it might just be edge glued, but no such luck. Every square inch of the carpet is glued to the floor.

The quest to remove the carpet adhesive began.  My attempts to scrape it up dry did not go over well.  I then decided to mop water on sections and allow it to sit for about 20 minutes.  The adhesive came up much easier and with two or three passes it was removed.  Below are some before and after shots for comparision:

Whoever put the carpet down also put some floor leveler down, although I’m not sure why as it didn’t level the floor. You can see the leveler in the first picture towards the top. It’s the area where the adhesive appears to be thicker. They didn’t allow the leveler to completely cure before putting down the carpet adhesive so the two are now permanently bonded. To remove the adhesive in these areas, I have to chip all of the floor leveler off of the floor as well (water doesn’t help soften it).

Three weekends of work and I have about half the floor done. I’m working on a plan in Visio but haven’t finalized anything yet. I’ll continue to post project updates and the finalized plan here and hopefully will be able to fit in a little work on games as well. Happy Thanksgiving to all.