[mjn.mixael]

We bought this house back in 2013 knowing that I would be finishing the basement. I've always wanted to do that. It came partially finished... as in the previous owner tried, wasn't very competent, and then gave up. More fun for me!

I started with the bathroom. The plumbing was already there, including a shower... I just had to patch it up and make it nice. I forgot to take pictures before I started, but it was a nasty little room that I was afraid to pee in... I made it nice.


Then began work in this craphole room that I planned to build into my home theater.


Yes.. that is wood paneling that I had just ripped off the wall. Ew. Why would anyone ever? I cleaned it up and fixed up the framing.


I also did electrical work and ran custom wiring for the home theater components. All devices other than the TV would go in the closet with the wiring run through the walls. Here's the closet panel closeup. Cat5, Speaker wire, Subwoofer wire, HDMI, Optical, and Coax... with plenty of plugs for everything.


The wall plugs for the TV area.


And subwoofers. Yes plural. Stereo subs, because why the hell not?


Needs to feel like a theater, so we need cool columns with cool lighting.


Ceiling drywall.


Covered columns.


Then build the soffit around the air duct. Couldn't move the duct, so let's make it look really awesome. Curved edge with Phillips Hue lightstrips inside.


Mud... Man this took forever.


Primer and a sweet example of the soffit looking sweet.


The closet.. painted with added shelf, access panel for additional random wiring, and temp controlled fans to keep the equipment nice and cool in the closet.


RED (wet) PAINT


Dry paint.


In-wall speakers... let's install those now.


With trim.


Soffit trim was less than fun to do...


Goodbye ugly window. Let's hide it behind a removable sound panel.


Decorate with more sound panels and choice nerd posters.



Carpet and added mini-step up front under the tv area to finish framing out the front of the room.


Add couch, TV and other equipment.


And the finishing touch.. bar height tables.


Hell yeah.


Now I've started again... see next post.

[mjn.mixael]

So now I'm building an office for myself... Begin by tearing out more wood paneling. Ew Ew Ew.


Clean up the room.



Build the walls and framing.





Now I'm ready to do electrical and other special wiring. I have a good idea where the desk will be. I'm going to mount the monitors on the wall, so I'm going to put plugs up being where the monitors go and a conduit to run the Display Port cables through the wall down to the PC itself. My question for you guys is on audio. I've considered building speakers into the ceiling. I've considered building them into the wall. Should I run speaker wire and use an external amp for my computer audio or should I just run 1/8 inch jack wire, add wall inputs, and go straight from my computer to mounted computer speakers? Should I even bother building the audio into the room or just run wire around the baseboards and put the speakers on stands on the floor?

[Scourge of Ages]

That home theater is smexy. Seeing stuff like this makes me want to make things myself, except I don't have the skill or permanent residence to do so in... Eventually, though.

[Bobboau]

and I thought my multi-zone sound system was impressive. I need to step up my game.

[Snarks]

Wow, that's really professional work, on the level of some fancy-schmancy interior designer level good.

[Goober5000]

Arr, this be fine work laddie!  A right good hideaway fer plottin' heists and countin' yer booty.  Keep yon speakers on their stands, lest ye capture a fresh haul and not be able t'upgrade!

(Yes, it's TLAPD.)

[Mongoose]

Amusingly enough, our family home is going to be pushing 25 years old soon, and my parents have still never managed to get around to finishing any portion of the basement.

[swashmebuckle]

Cool basement! I think you'll have a much easier time getting good sound in the office with free standing speakers. Having speakers in or on walls can introduce issues where low frequency sounds kind of bloom out and muddy up the mix. Small rooms are especially prone to having the bass go everywhere, making it really difficult to get a solid listening environment. Having the speakers on stands lets you pull them out a couple feet from the walls which mostly solves that problem, and it also affords you the luxury of being able to easily make changes to the listening space/equipment in the future like Goober said.

[karajorma]

Nice work Mjn.

I think it's an interesting sign of the community's age that we've reached the point where we're posting pics of our kids and interior decorating.

[mjn.mixael]

Thanks for the compliments. Finishing my own basement is really a labor of love.

So free standing speakers it is. I'll be sure to leave room under the baseboards to run the wire. What do you all think of PC speakers kits like the ones from Logitech? Or should I go more with an amp system? The kits are cheaper... Any recommendations?

[est1895]

I just kept saying Wow to all the pictures.  So I'm curious how long did it take you to complete these (bought house in 2013) and how did you know what to do?  I have to route a Cat 5 or 6 cable to my room so that both computers in the house can use the printer.  I've always thought of having someone do that for me, but seeing all that excellent wiring that you have done I wonder if I could do that?

[mjn.mixael]

I just kept saying Wow to all the pictures.  So I'm curious how long did it take you to complete these (bought house in 2013) and how did you know what to do?  I have to route a Cat 5 or 6 cable to my room so that both computers in the house can use the printer.  I've always thought of having someone do that for me, but seeing all that excellent wiring that you have done I wonder if I could do that?

I helped my dad repair and remodel houses he rented when I was a kid, so that's where I got the basic skills to do these rooms. The theater took me about 8 months with all of it's special wiring, the columns, and curved soffit. I expect the office will take me significantly less time, depending on budget constraints.

As far as cabling. It's very easy to run wire if you have the walls open. If not... well it's really specific to the room and it's construction, so I can't give you any tips there. Buy the cable and the ends separately. It's much easier to run the cable that way. You can go to any Home Depot and get wall mounts for ethernet plugs and they come with the little punch tool you'll need to attach the end points. I went with Cat5e because it's a little cheaper and I certainly don't need 10Gbps in my network. With everything going wireless in residential networks, you lose any real benefit to 10Gbps which is only good for in-network stuff (unless you happen to have a 10Gbps internet connection... I doubt it.) So I have 1Gbps with Google Fiber, which Cat5e can easily handle.

[est1895]

Wow!  The site is back up.  What happened?

Mjn this is what an Epson Customer Rep. to me in two emails:

Thank you for contacting Epson regarding your Epson WorkForce WF-3540.
 
You need to use a cross over cable (not the regular cat 5) if connecting directly to the printer. If you have a WIFI network at home you can set the printer to be on the network, so no need of either USB or ethernet cable.
 
We take your satisfaction seriously and hope that we have helped resolve your issue. If you receive a survey from us, we would greatly appreciate if you could take a few minutes to provide us with feedback about your support experience. Your ratings and comments are extremely important to us.
 
If this did not resolve your issue, please reply to this email for further assistance. If you have a different support issue, submit a request via our U.S. or Canada Support Site and we will respond in a timely manner.
 
Thank you again for contacting Epson.

Thank you for contacting Epson regarding your Epson WorkForce WF-3540.
 
Crossover cable is a type of Ethernet cable that can be used to connect directly to your printer.  The normal patch cables are used to connect computer to router.
We take your satisfaction seriously and hope that we have helped resolve your issue. If you receive a survey from us, we would greatly appreciate if you could take a few minutes to provide us with feedback about your support experience. Your ratings and comments are extremely important to us.
 
If this did not resolve your issue, please reply to this email for further assistance. If you have a different support issue, submit a request via our U.S. or Canada Support Site and we will respond in a timely manner.
 
Thank you again for contacting Epson.

[mjn.mixael]

I.... Have never heard of that before. If it's some proprietary thing... Screw that. Install the printer on one computer and setup Google Cloud Print. Bam done.

[Bobboau]

not sure if this would be useful to you or not, but as I mentioned above I have been doing a whole house zoned sound system and I've been writing software for controlling music in different rooms using MPD as a back end. If that's something that sounds like it might be useful to you check it out.

[Goober5000]

Mjn this is what an Epson Customer Rep. to me in two emails:

[snip]

That is a terrible way to explain a very simple concept.  Let me see if I can do better.

1) Normally, if you want to connect a computer to another computer via LAN, you plug them both into a network switch.  The network switch has special hardware that links everything up properly.

2) If you want to directly connect a computer to another computer, without going through the switch, you need a special LAN cable called a crossover cable.  All this does is flip around two wires so that input for one computer is output for the other, and vice versa.

3) Presumably, the printer uses the same LAN connection that a computer does.  Therefore if you plug both the computer and the printer into a network switch, you won't need the crossover cable.

[StarSlayer]

* StarSlayer somehow expected Orion Main Hall in basement, still impressed!

[Fury]

4) Most network switches and routers are capable of using crossover cables too. Or at least I haven't encountered any in the past decade that aren't.

[Bobboau]

@goob: most networking hardware detects what type of cable is used and does the flipping it's self if needed, so most of that might not be needed anymore, but otherwise yeah.

[pecenipicek]

@goob: most networking hardware detects what type of cable is used and does the flipping it's self if needed, so most of that might not be needed anymore, but otherwise yeah.

anything capable of using 1gbit does auto-negotiation of that, therefore nyeaah.
if you have a gbit switch, you can stop caring src1|src2

Also, apropos Logitech speaker kits, not sure how relevant, but i got a ~$100 Z506 set. i would like those $100 back, as they are kinda ****. The older, cheaper Creative P380 2.1 system blows it out of the water completely.
But i'm sure you are aiming for higher quality devices, therefore my input on this front is kinda irrelevant