Moving in to colder weather, it's time to come indoors for the year. I decided it is time to get an actual start on the building of my 'man cave'. If time and money allows, I'll try to get the rest of the basement done, but honestly I am only concerned with completing this one room by itself.
I do understand that in the long run it would be a lot easier to just do the whole basement as one complete project. That said, it's just not in my budget to do the whole thing from start to finish at one time. I'm expecting this room itself to take me the majority of the winter. If things go well, I'll probably try to add on to this, next year to finish the basement out.
This is something I "kind of" started last winter, but time just didn't allow me to get a whole lot of it done. I am determined this year, to get the walls up and the flooring in. I will have to pay an electrician to come in at some point, to either run the electrical or at the very least check it to make sure I didn't mess it up. The
plan is: remove the old paint off the walls, seal up any/all air gaps and potential ways for water to get in (basement is staying dry, after regrading the exterior). After that will be application of DryLok paint, then the bottom wall plate. Once that is done, we can frame out the walls and add the insulation, this is the point where I'll potentially start to save a little $$ in heating costs (projecting 120$ savings/year, once the basement is done, this isn't including the savings from the cold air return, nor the savings for the higher average temperature of the air surrounding heater/hot water tank), only accounting for heat exchange through the cinder block walls. Since this project is incorporating about 1/4 of the exterior walls, we can roughly guesstimate 1/4 of the projected savings, or a whopping 30$/year. All for the low low price of a couple thousand dollars.
At that point, it would be time to pay that electrician to run my electric. Thankfully, most of my electrical needs will be completely inside this room, with only really needing to add 2 receptacles to the other areas of the basement. Once that is done, I'll be able to finish the walls, lay the flooring, and finish the ceiling.
Leaving the rest for a casual adding furnishings as needed. Might even decide to attempt to build a custom desk to incorporate usage of otherwise unusable areas. Seriously, half the room will have almost no headroom, so I'm thinking a nice big desk, or something.