white noise

This weekend I decided I needed to get back in the swing of working in the basement so I spent it hooking up the real sound system. Up to this point watching movies down there has been accompanied by a set of computer speakers. Well, astalavista Altec Lansing!

The first job was installing the five speaker mounts. Yep, it’s a 5.1 system going in down there. I ran wire for an additional back two, but I have neither the speakers or an amp that support 7.1. Installing the mounts went smoothly but it took some time. It took a combination of drilling into the steel studs and using drywall toggle anchors. I worked on it while watching OSU put a whooping on Northwestern. Even though the mounts are really intended for Bose satellite systems, they work great on my small Sony speakers.

Then I moved the sub-monster down there. I’ve had the sub probably close to two years now. I bought it on Ebay at a great price in anticipation of the theater room. It can pump 150 Watts, has a 12″ cone, and is THX certified. It’s about the size of an end table, but don’t even think of setting a drink on it! It’s really a bit more bass than anyone needs, but since the rest of my system consists of satellites I wanted to make sure there was ample bass support.

Next I tore apart all the entertainment wiring upstaris to move some of the components down to the basement rack. Once the rack was wired up the real ‘fun’ started…the calibration. I decided to go ahead and give the projector a video calibration. I was holding off since I’m still only projecting on primed drywall. But since it’ll probably be a couple months before I get to building a screen, I thought I might as well dial in the picture for the current situation. The AVIA calibration DVD is an awesome tool. Lots of test patterns to really help you tweak things. I’ve got a pretty good handle on Color, Tint, Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness, but not as much on some of the more advanced settings (like gamma on each LCD panel). The thing about video calibration is you really need to set up a couple presets like “bright” and “dark” depending on the room lighting you might want. Luckily my projector has slots for 3 user settings in addition to the 5 or so factory presets. The other thing about video is that there is definitely a smoothness versus sharpness tradeoff. You can go really sharp which is instantly impressive (especially on HD material), but part of the impressive impression is just because things don’t look quite natural. Away from that end of the spectrum you get a smoother picture – a lot of people describe it as more film-like. The smoother setting doesn’t give you that initial jolt, but ultimately I find the picture more satisfying and easier to watch. For what it’s worth, the AVIA calibrations lead you to the smoother setting as well. There is a balance though because too smooth becomes soft and you lose detail. After the calibration I was really happy with the picture – not too different than before, but I think the depth and color are a little more natural.

Then I finished up by calibrating the audio. The AVIA disk also contains a bunch of great tests for that – pink noise, frequency sweeps, etc. I set up a digital sound meter (SPM) in the ideal seating location and ran through all the tests. The sound meter was especially helpful in setting the sub volume and frequency crossover. Matching it to the five satellite speakers is really crutial in making a good soundscape and without the SPM it’s hard for me to compare levels between very different frequencies. Something that was cool was I measured the sub without significant dropoff down to about 20Hz even though it’s only officially rated down to 35Hz (nice to see a conservative spec for a change). My hearing gives out around 25Hz, so I guess I have many rock concerts to thank for that. The other thing I learned is that the official calibration standard (according to AVIA) is VERY LOUD. The benchmark is to calibrate all speaker levels to 85dB at the optimimal seating location. That’s insane. From my reading on the internet 85dB is considered the threshold to hearing damage! I instead used 75dB as my benchmark (which is actually the common benchmark for home installations) – still very loud, but still TEN times less intense (dBs are log scale units).

After all that was done I enjoyed a few tracks off Peter Gabriel’s Secret World DVD. The sound is fantastic. I can’t wait to try out a lot of other disks.

We’re down to one last weekend before we are calling it quits through October so we can focus on Halloween. This was our plan last year and it worked out pretty good – no Halloween distractions while we’re doing basement work and vise-versa. With one coat of paint up things aren’t visually changing too much now. Seconds coats of paint are going up, shelves and cabinets are being hung, and some light fixtures are installed ‘for real’. Here’s a shot of the finished built-in shelves on one side of the screen. The lights are on a dimmer so you can set your ambiance versus distraction level accordingly.

The wet bar is taking shape, but there’s a LOT of work left to piece it all together. We’ll see how far it makes it to Halloween.

There also plenty of clean up needed before the annual party. Here’s a stack of empties we finally cleared out!

We now have at least one coat of color on about half of the basement. The wet bar is in pretty good shape having two coats already:

And here’s a wider shot of so you can see the color scheme a bit better:

The shelf for the rack components is looking good, too. I couldn’t wait to put the cover plates back on!

And here’s how half of the ceiling is shaping up:

There’s hours of tedious cut-in work when it comes to painting these different colors, but it’s coming together.

We finished the priming coat of paint at the end of last weekend – right on the planned schedule. Now we’re on to the first coat of color. There are five different colors in the main room – is that too many? It’s not as bad as it sounds. The theme is roughly brown and blue – again, not as bad as it may sound – with three shades of brown and two of bluish-purple. The colors are hard to judge while it’s in process, but it should turn out great.

The plan for the next week and a half is to finish the first coat (and second in some spots) and install the wet bar. After that comes door casing, caulking, and a second coat of paint. Floor and baseboards will likely have to wait till after the big party. We’re planning to shift most of our effort toward Halloween once October is here.

Painting continues. Last night I got half of hell’s ceiling primed. It took about 4.5 hours. Here’s a couple shots of the latest:

Labor Day weekend lived up to its name. I made a 4-day weekend out of it – and spent it all in the basement. Dad came down for the weekend as well, so Donna and I had some much needed help. It doesn’t get much more tedious then finishing a drywall job. This is where it all catches up with you – a little uneven framing here, a bubble in the tape there – it all has to go away in this stage. Coat, sand, rinse, repeat…until it all disappears.

When Sunday rolled around pretty much all the drywall was finished. The final tally was 45 gallons of mud. It was great to sweep up and know the end of dust-filled days was in sight. By the afternoon Donna and I began painting. We got two and half room primed that night.

Gradually the dark, dusty basement is finally looking like a real living space. Priming will continue throughout the week. Hopefully everything will be primed by the end of this weekend. Painting in general will be on-going for quite some time. We have 20 gallons of paint queued up (and probably more to come).

Seriously tired of everything to do with drywall. Happy to report, however, that the second coat is complete. I’ve applied 35 gallons of mud at this point – probably 34.5 gallons to the walls and ceiling and a half gallon to my lungs and digestive track.

Mudding continues. Will it never end?

A brief basement update here. We just finished taping and cornerbead tonight (well a tiny bit remains here and there, but I’m calling this phase over). Now to go back over everything with another couple coats of mud. This is taking forever! But things are shaping up.

A few pictures so you can see where the 77 sheets of drywall went…

The stairway with the very hard to find recessed lighting:

The main room. A large movie screen will sit between the built-ins…eventually. The built-in shelves are looking good – a ton of work – but they are lit on a dimmer and have a really clean look.

To one side of the main room we have the future home of the wet bar. Here I will mix many a drink as we try to forget how much work all this was.

Just adjacent to the wet bar is a hallway leading back to other rooms. Here you can catch a glipse of two features which should be filed under “you really like to make a lot of work for yourself”: three cutout “windows” (to mirror the three-shelved built-ins) and beyond that, a lighted niche.

Down the hall on the right is a furnance room and the laundry room which you can get a glipse of below. The door on the right goes to storage under the stairs (also taped and mudded).

And that brings us to the end of the hall where we have the “back” room. It’s a small bedroom/exercise room/whatever with a large (unfinshed storage closet behind it).

And lastly, I bring you back to the main room, to see the best picture I could manage of the ceiling…my Sistine Chapel…or what Donna calls “the work of a mad scientist evil genius>”.

From my basement expenses spreadsheet I summed up the number of sheets of drywall it took. Any guesses?

77! Three of those were 10′, the rest 8′. Four were green board, the rest standard 1/2″ stuff.

Meanwhile, taping and mudding continues.