Finishing our basement!

Macdaddy4738

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2005
My dad and I have been working for a long time to finish our basement (half it it at least, its a HUGE basement)

We are basically at the point where the electrician can come in and put new outlets in, then we can begin dry walling.

What we really need is some direction into Televisions, sound systems, and interior design suggestions/tips. I believe he is wanting a single large TV (Im gonna try and talk him into 50+ inch Plasma :-D :-D!) and possibly 2 smaller screens as well, preferrably with sound switchers so we could turn sound off and on at the flip of a slector switch.

We definetly want surround sound (5.1 preferrably) but arent quite sure how all the new stuff works. We are hoping to put in a sound cabinet with all the stuff (DVD player, video game systems, digital cable boxes, all that type stuff.) Is there a good way to route the remote systems together (read ONE remote, rather then 12,000) and make it so we could use the remote without having to be right at the item in question?

We are looking for tips on celing as well. Currently the ceiling is unfinished 2x4 and bare insulation. We want to paint this all black, and hang a grid for a hanging celing, but with no tile in it. We found that painting the insulation is difficult, and are wondering if there is a specific type of paint we should use, or is it just not a good idea?

We are also hoping to install a bar in there, and if all goes according to MY plan (hehe) I want to get taps for beer installed in there. Whats the protocol on this, is it possible for a household to actually have taps installed?

Orginally we were looking at a bathroom, but I believe we have ditched that plan (IMO its a good choice, now we have room for a pool table) I HOPE i can talk him into the pool table, as I have wanted one for YEARS. What are good brand names and things to look for in pool tables?

Sorry for all the questions, but we are pretty excited about this :)
 
Well, not sure if I can say this since I am not a vendor, but...

I own a company that does home technology work and electrical work. We are licensed, legal, insured blah,blah,blah

Its VERY difficult to tell you what to do without seeing the place, but if you are looking to hire it out, PM me.

Also, dont limit yourself to 5.1 surround, go 6.1 or 7.1.

Yes you can use 1 remote. I sell a few product lines for that ranging from uncomfortably expensive to "somebody please hold me I have been violated"

Data closet is the way to go with IR repeaters you dont have to see anything. also since you re in the perfect stage now get the infastructure in place. You need plenty of cables ran and chases for future requiremnets.

If you want I'd be glad to talk to ya about some/all of it.
 
7.1 would be incredible. Im not sure of a possible budget as of now though.

Im still a bit in the dark as to what is absolutley necessary in a data cabinet. What are the necessities to Surround sound/home entertainment systems?

Id love to know about your products. Since we are in the stage where the walls arent in place, we need to get on this now.
 
Ill send ya a PM we can move this there
 
Ive got a good many 2x4 (i think) ceiling tiles taking up space if they are of any use.
 
The biggest thing to worry about now is planning the in-wall wiring. Exactly what kind of stereo you get later is a bit less of an issue, except that you just want to be sure you have plenty of options when the time comes. E.g. you can run enough wire for 7 channels, but only use 5 of them now.
Depending on the configuaryion of teh room, you just want to have a keystone jack wall plate in teh vicinity of where the speaker(s) would be. What you can do is to run, say, 2 sets of wires to each plate, even if you plan to have only 1 speaker there now. That way you canswitch to using 2 off of that one later if oyu re-configure the room.
I like the stanadrd keystone plates, and then using ketstone pop-in conenctions. You can get connections for RCA, BNC, IR, stranded terminal... pretty much anything, and pop them in wherever you want them. You just have to be careful about your plan, and budget... b/c those things are onl ya few bucks a peice, but add up very very fast in a big setup like this.

What I did in my basement room when I finished it off was to run many kinds of wire to each outlet box, and then all to a central box.. .even more than there were physical plugs for. That way if I changed my mind/plans later, I could just remove the face of the box and change the plug(s) used and pop it back in.
My suspicion is that KsiHi will get you all set up though...
 
yes yes,
And also feel free to run conduit along the walls, and pull lines.
in case you want to change to better cable, different cable etc etc.
I would also look to go 7.1, but REALLY figure out your budget and go from there.
As for "AV" closets, you can do them really nice, with IR or RF repeaters so you have no sound pollution etc etc, but if you are going that way, you are going to want to pour some money into acoustics in the room.
As SkyHi said, you can go from 100$ for a "decent" remote, to "Oh dear god that hurt" for full two way programmed macro pop the popcorn, walk your dog remote.


As for taps in a house?
Yes, you can easily pick up a soda machine. :D
Or a bar style hose and canisters. (Don't they will gum up cause you won't use it enough)
Underage users asking about beer.
But yea, you can pick up a kegerator, and stick homebrew kegs, or pony kegs in it.
Any bigger and the beer will go bad before you drink it.
 
thanks guys!

As for flooring, we arent sure of what we are doing yet.

and for the celing, we are pretty sure it will just be an empty grid up there, no tiles.

What type of jacks are you talking about? Are the rear sets of speakers generally mounted ABOVE you, or on the ground?
 
Here's an example
http://www.av-outlet.com/en-us/dept_257.html

These prices are pretty high but you get the idea. Google around.
Typically for speakers, if the line is already amplified and you just want to connect the speaker to it, "binding posts" are most common and give good connection.
Keep in mind also that to be safe and maintain fire code, you need to use "in-wall" rated wire, and get a decent gauge. With the ceiling being "open" it may be fun routing the wires so oyu don't see them.
There's no specific code for low/non-voltage box height in NC, but for asthetics I'd mount them the same height as your electric boxes.
As for height of speakers themselves, that depends where you want the sound stage and and option of mobility. For movies you want them behind you around ear level. But if you're cranking the stereo and playing pool on the other side of the room and moving around alot, higher (maybe ceiling) would be better.
 
Oh FWIW, I personally don't like the open-backed "low-voltage" old work boxes like they have in that link. They tend to have no rigidity and flex alot, making it easy for the cover plate to not install right.
Biggest problem, though, is that w/ the open back, if you aren't careful when working in them, it's easy for the wires to fall out the back and down into the wall. Now in some cases this might actually be good (if you feel like you need room, AND you have small girly 4 year-old hands to reach in there and grab it) but I'd rather just use an extra-deep full-sized blue old-work box.
 
Oh FWIW, I personally don't like the open-backed "low-voltage" old work boxes like they have in that link. They tend to have no rigidity and flex alot, making it easy for the cover plate to not install right.
Biggest problem, though, is that w/ the open back, if you aren't careful when working in them, it's easy for the wires to fall out the back and down into the wall. Now in some cases this might actually be good (if you feel like you need room, AND you have small girly 4 year-old hands to reach in there and grab it) but I'd rather just use an extra-deep full-sized blue old-work box.
oi oi
Good point.
Of course if paying someone to do all the installation, then no worries cause it's their problem when the wires fall down :D
But doing it right (and making sure your contractor does it right) can save you a lot of trouble in the future.
Aka playing pool, goofing off, whatever and a speaker wire gets caught ripping the post off so you have to replace the mounting plate :D
(not that I've EVER had to do hasty home repair because of something I did. At least not if my parents ever read this forum)


Ratlab also brought up another VERY good point.
Decide what you want to use the room for, THEN decide how to build it.
What's ideal for a "gameroom" isn't exactly ideal for a "movie room" etc etc.
also a movie room you have to decide what type of seating,
do you want elevated seating for the back rows of people?
Do you NEED more than one row of seating?
How are you going to do acoustics? Are you going to bother with that?
You might want to hit up some of the home theater type sites and do some browsing to get some ideas of what's possible and how much of a second mortgage your folks will be taking out for this :D
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/fusionbb/showforum.php?fid/20/
They have some good ideas, (some people just seem to have tooooo much money though. It depresses me.)
 
A lot of good points here.

I disagree with the comment on open back boxes, but dont use the cheap open backs.

If you use the better quality boxes (nhint, they aint coming from HD or Lowe's) they can be as rigid as a full box, and they are eternally customizable. They make fishing later a lot easier also. I NEVER use closed back on my monitor connection points. Even coax can be tough to work in and around, not even mentioning HDMI or who knows what comes next year.

Open grid ceiling, is most likely going to disappoint you in the end. Blackout tiles are expensive, but really your best option.

I did have a homeowner spraypaint white tiles with flat black paint and it turned out decent. But he swore hed never do it again, based on the amount of paint it took. Seems the porous tiles absord paint pretty well.

The best advice though, is picture what the finished room will be and what you will do in it.

If it is a theater room, go all out with rumble seats, and insist on optimum speaker placement. Howvere if it is a gameroom, that wont make as much sense, and you need to consider functionality, etc.
 
bringing this thread back up..

I heard that if you didnt have proper permits for the work we are doing (framing walls and such) that the square footage that we are adding to the house wont count? Is this true?
 
bringing this thread back up..
I heard that if you didnt have proper permits for the work we are doing (framing walls and such) that the square footage that we are adding to the house wont count? Is this true?
Define "doesnt count". Come tax time, you won't pay more :huggy:, and when you go to sell it, the finsished basement will definitley come into play with the purchase price, although it may not be reflected in the appraised value. That could be an issue with the next buyer getting a loan for too much more than appraisal. I guess one other area to consider would be your homeowners insurance.
 
I mean that it wont count towards the total sq ft. of the house under an appraisal because we didnt have permits?

I also heard that homeowners insurance may not insure a new basement if there were no permits?

Id assume this all falls under Homeowner exemptions?
 
appraisal for sale will be done with a tape measure INSIDE the hosue.
It will count then

Appraisal for taxes, is done from the air and by a computer.
It wont know.

Though Id assume basement sqaure footage is counted whether finished or not (dont know never had a basement)

MAKE SURE AND REPORT THE A/V WORK TO YOUR HOME ONERS INSURANCE. Many companies consider HT systems as some stupid removable speaker rule and have like a $1000 limit on pay out.

Burned a customer of mine a year or so ago, he had a 25k home theater (in a 200k house, priorities man!) house burned down he got less than 1k in tech reimbursement.
 
so to update this thread a bit..

Finished the carpentry, and the electricians came by yesterday.

24 outlets (lights, switches, outlets, all that stuff) for 654$ i believe. Sounds like a good deal to me. The guy even routed the cable to the correct location for us as well.

Apparently they were amazed because one of the old switches we had down there was a mercury switch :lol:

Once we get the dry wall up, they are coming back to tie it into the main breaker, and install outlets and all that.
 
So if you had an electrician come and do it, I assume you got the permits?
Here's my opinion on permits.
They cost about $50-100 for all of them. That is a snot dribble compared to the cost of everything else, so why would you NOT do it? In exchange, you get (a) coverage by your homeowners insurrance, (b) the blessing of the county (c) legal documentation of the increased square footage on record with the county and (d) something to show a buyer to quell any concerns.
The county provides the inspections as part of the fee.
Yes, it will increase the property taxes. They just use a program to estimatet he value basedo n sq footage etc... and "finished basement" is not the same value as "primary living space" in these calulations, so it will not be as huge boost as you might think. They already have doc of the basemnt space and it is in the current assessment, so the only change is the difference in $/sq ft they put on one versus the other.
And as a side note - while not having to pay tax on it might seem nice and convenient, the taxes are there for a reason, and avoiding them is neither legal nor fair.
 
we didnt get any permits.

We were told by the electrician that as long as whatever he is installing doesnt leave the house, its fine.
 
we didnt get any permits.
We were told by the electrician that as long as whatever he is installing doesnt leave the house, its fine.


He is wrong.
And that was an illegal job at that point and he risked his license needlessly.

In an unfinished addition, We usually charge $20 per "drop" so Id say the price was about right, except he didnt pull a permit.
 
He is wrong.
And that was an illegal job at that point and he risked his license needlessly.
In an unfinished addition, We usually charge $20 per "drop" so Id say the price was about right, except he didnt pull a permit.

Hm.

At what point does it become necessary for a permit?

He didnt actually wire anything into the breaker box yet.
 
SkyHi will know better than me, but I believe the rule of thumb is, any new installation (e.g. new line or tap).

If the drywall has not been put up yet, it's not too late. You can still apply for the permit, just be sure to get the county inspection set up before the elctrical is covered up. Same with structural etc. If you ran new HVAC lines, you'll probably need a permit for that as well.
 
looks like we needed permits even before we started construction.

We arent planning on getting them, so whatever.
 
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