First day of building the new walls, the contractor got a lot done, insulation is all up on the exterior walls and headers are in place for the new walls around the perimeter. And they only were here for 2 hours today.
It’s getting closer!
–Randy
Hi Randy,
Sounds like you hired some decent contractors. I hope it continues to go well.
Dave
Pics or it didn’t happen. LOL nice to hear you are getting closer to your new layout.
I can feel the excitement[:P].
Like Mike said, pics or shens!
Of course once you get the space finished, at least if you work full time and have type A wife, you’ll be biting at the bit to work on the layout and often find time is still hard to come by! I guess I can’t complain too much, I started benchwork last month and have 7 sections assembled and most of them up that form the core staging sectoin and a bit beyond; a total of about 50 linear feet.
The red areas represent benchwork assembled and mostly up - seven major sections. Homasote is down and painted on most of it and leveled.
Well, the walls have to be painted (she said she’d help - and I am holding her to it, she’s the one said we can do it all in a weekend, so I left that option off the contract with the builders). ANd paint the stairs, and install new handrails. The painting will hold up completion - it has to be painted before they can install the drop ceiling and new overhead lights.
–Randy
She? [(-D]
Your wife? [(-D][(-D]
Your hobby? [(-D][(-D][(-D]
The basement? [(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D]
Randy, you better call the contractor back. [sigh]
Rich
If you mean she, as in your wife, always a bonus is she helps. Once we got some major stuff done on the first floor my wife told me she promised to help with the basement finishing and help she did. She helped with the drywall hanging, painting after it was taped, mudded and sanded. Then she did all the tiling in the basement bathroom shower and floor, and then did most of the floor prep and installation. Bless her.
I would have loved to finish the basement fast in a matter of days or a few weeks but I didn’t want to cut into our savings so my wife and I did most of it ourselves, paying as we went - so even though it took almost a year, we paid for it mostly out of monthly income. On the plus side, we will have increased value of the home - sweat equity.
Installed the drop ceiling myself which I found was actually much easier than I imagined.
What are you using for lights? I ordered 16 LED 2x2’ 4k temp flat panel lights from greenledzone.com at about $33 each and installed a dimmer with them. I really like them and the color temp seems better than the 5k LED’s I used over my last layout.
I’m using some sort of 4K LEDs, a mix of 2x4 adn 2x2 panels depending on where. No dimmers, these are strictly for use while walking around and building the layout. The most used entrance to the house is still via the basement, from the garage. There’s also a front exterior door. That and the bathroom are getting the vinyl planked flooring, and one circuit of lights, with 3 places of control - at each door plus at the bottom of the stairs. The whole rest of the basement will have LED fixtures in the drop ceiling controlled by another switch at the bottom of the stairs. ANd then 2 switches with pilot lights to control all the outlets - and I still have one more switch for the stairwell light. Not sure how I’m goign to do 5. I guess a 4 gang box plus a single.
The layout will have integrated LED strips for lighting - THOSE will have dimmers, actually DMX drivers so I can dim the white, play with the RGB string to do simulated sunrise and sunset, and bring up the blue for night.
DMX drivers are pretty cheap, and otherwise it’s a very simple and robust protocol (if it’s good enough for shows…) and otherwise pretty simple to automate. ANd I can’t build ALL the electronics, I’d never get to the layout.
–Randy
So far I’m liking the 4K temp over the 5k. Interestingly, I painted my Homasote a light brown color just to coat it and give a base color. It was light brown mistake paint from Home Depot and it look light brown there. But after I painted the Homasote, it had a greenish cast to it. I could only guess it was 5K lights influenced the color hue.
Now as I have used the same paint and the sections are under 4K lights, they look more like light brown paint.
My wife did that once. I got her a scrub suit to wear so she wouldn’t ruin any clothes. After we were done, she couldn’t throw that suit away fast enough. Now “I don’t have anything to wear” [:D]
Some pics
Day 1:
Day 2. You can see the footer for the wall that will enclose the yard and town on the left and the branch on the right.
–Randy
Very nice!
Nice. [Y] Now I see what your doing, stud wall after insulation.
Mike.
Gee, where’d you get all that insulation? [:P]
I think they picked it up out a side door at Home Depot [:D]
–Randy
Lookin’ good!
Dave
Woo. You’ll be done at light speed compared to my finishing!
The best thing is the layout room will be a nice environment for the layout - no ugly unfinished room to mar the photos of the layout! [;)]
In the bottom picture, from over at the top left where the room disappears into the corner, is where the front door is. From there over past the visible door (to the garage) and then straight down towards the viewer, where the air compressor and hose are, is the part that will get the vinyl planking.
They are also putting horizonatal spacers between the studs to keep them aligned. Plus there’s still all the electric to run before the drywall goes up. I posted a mention of this in the adhesives thread, but in reviewing where I wanted the outlets to go with the contractor, I hit on the idea of putting half up top and half int he usual location - so power supplies for the top deck lighting and so forth can just sit up on top of the valance. Since I really have no way to run wires up from under the bottom deck all the way to the top, but I will be able to run wires from above the top valance down to the top deck. And of course up from the traditional outlet location to the bottom deck.
ANd that neatly divides the two switched circuits as well, upper outlets and lower outlets.
–Randy
Installing outlets at this point costs very little. The more in a utilitarian space, or train room, the better, IMO.
BTW, see how nice floor to ceiling sky blue walls look, [:)]