As happy as I am with the progress I made last weekend on the Man Cave Project, I continue to be frustrated by the lack of wall plugs available to me.  Knowing that extension cords are not safe as a permanent solution (i.e. running a mini-fridge/microwave) I was discussing some options with my buddy Paul B.  After some discussion, it came out that he finished his own basement and before long he offered to help me finish up mine.

After karate on Tuesday, he stopped in to assess the situation and seems to think it won’t be too difficult so now I begin the fun process of measuring and pricing materials.  We fully intend to make this a long term project, starting with the framing over the summer.  For fun, I grabbed a copy of Google SketchUp to help me lay out the floor plan.  I have to find my extra long tape measure to get accurate measurements, but it will let me visualize the basement in 3D as I figure out what configuration choices I want to make.

Since this project falls below the debt repayment goal, I’m going to take special care to make sure the first thing stays first and the budget and timeline for this does not prevent any of my other goals from getting completed, so it will be intentionally slow going.

I had the day off today, so I slept until 11:00 but got up ready to make the most of the rest of the day.

I started out by cleaning the rabbit cages and reorganized their habitat.  I moved the shelving unit into the corner and moved their cages a bit closer to the wall.  Then I turned my attention to my area of the basement.  I moved everything away from the walls of the basement and vacuumed up a bunch of debris and dead spiders (ew).

The old owners of this house left this filthy 1970’s table in the basement, aside from being dirty it was in fairly good shape with a heavy glass top on it.  I spent about 30 minutes scrubbing it down and it turned out pretty well.  I rolled up the ugly, stained carpet remnants that were down there leaving only a green carpet that was in decent condition.  I moved my mini-fridge and microwave out from storage and cleaned them up and put my big black leather chair in place and I think I’m pretty much in action.

This project wasn’t intended to be a full-on remodel of my basement, I just wanted to make it more functional as a place to relax.  I think I have accomplished this goal… all there is left to do now is get a powerstrip for the appliances and get my record player and a guitar down there and I should be good to go!  Here’s a few pictures of The Man Cave, Mark 1…

EDIT: Yes, you do see an orange extension cord there… I know this is a bad idea, so I’m not going to hook up my appliances in this way.  It’s probably going to be awhile before I can get the mini-fridge and microwave hooked up at this rate, but at least the re-organizing is done!

Man Cave - Mark 1

Man Cave, view from the corner

The New Rabbit Habitat

Man Cave - Before I started work tonight!

After Tasha headed to bed tonight, I started in on the Man Cave project.  I decided to start small by simply re-arranging the stuff on the storage unit to see if my Mom’s re-stacking genes could pay any dividends.  I’m happy to say that they have.  I was able to re-arrange my entire LOTR sword collection (sadly, still in their boxes) to make enough room to remove most of the storage bins, luggage, and miscellanea from the floor to the storage unit.

I had the unpleasant hindrance of being smacked in the face by the dangling ethernet cable that was hanging down in the middle of the room, so the next order of business was re-running that along the ceiling.  Luckily, there is a vent running just to the right of where the cable was run originally, so I simply had to thread the cable back down into the basement and along this vent.  A strategically placed splitter for my cable provided the additional support needed to keep this cable up and out of the way.  Next I moved the two larger storage bins under the storage unit and decided to call it a night.

Not bad for a few hours worth of work!  I’m going to need some light down there along with some plugs for my mini-fridge and microwave, so I might need to venture out in search of some extension cords and power strips to solve that one.  I’m going to work at re-arranging the remaining boxes and furniture tomorrow and I might remove some of the ugly remnants of carpet that are covering the floor.

More soon!

Several of you have asked about the Man Cave project, part of my 2010 goals.

The motivations for this project are two-fold: first, I enjoyed having a basement space in our old house and second, I wanted to have a place where I can play my guitar on the amp and not bother Tasha.  A few people have sent me links to DIY sites for framing and finishing a basement, and I don’t think I’m prepared to make that type of remodel now.  That directly conflicts with the “get out of debt” goal so that level of Man Cave will just have to wait.

Mostly the goal revolves around clearing out and rearranging the basement space to make the most of it.  I am thinking about potentially building a corner bar using two of these IKEA kitchen peninsula hacks that were recently featured on IKEAHacker.com.  That’ll be later in the year (if at all), the first step is going to be cleaning out the basement and getting the space set up as best as I can.  Tonight I took a few lingering boxes of garbage out of the basement to get the ball rolling, so hopefully this goal will get finished quickly!