racketboy.com

Edit: added a brand new piece of decor yesterday, see bottom picture A coworker of mine built the board for me, and I added the pieces from a set I bought a couple years ago.

So we've been working on updating our basement (my man cave) for about 5 years. It was put on hold for a significant amount of time thanks to a seemingly incurable issue of water coming in during the thaw and heavy rainstorms. Finally we invested in drain tile and a sump pump, and things are getting finished enough down there that I'm comfortable showing it off a little. There are still some niggling issues (weird scallop borders above TV wall and bar that would require an entirely new ceiling if we wanted to tear them out, the carpet seam in the middle of the room is a bit wonky from being peeled up a million times when water would come in, etc), but for a really old house, it's becoming a pretty sweet place. Here's some basic pics that show it off. Of note: After struggling to find an input lag solution for my HDTV for 8+ years, a year or two ago I sold off my entire 225+ game NES collection (including Snow Bros. and Contra Force), along with almost all my valuable SNES games (MMX 2+3, Chrono, Turtles, Contra 3, Secret of Mana, FF3, etc etc etc) in order to buy my stereo. I just got a Retron 5, which has solved the lag issue, and I'm getting back in the game, so please excuse my paltry NES and SNES collections shown here for a few months This post (right now anyway) is more about showing off the space than it is about showing off specific games (and I don't feel like showing off all my modern games, which is the most impressive part of my collection presently).

The rundown of consoles hooked up: Wii, Wii U, PS3 (hidden behind door of entertainment center), PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, N64

TV: Panasonic ST30 50" Plasma

Audio: Yamaha RX-v567 Receiver, Bowers and Wilkins CM1 Right and Left channel, Bowers and Wilkins CMCentre 2 for Center Channel, Klipsch HD100 rear surround, Audio Technica AT-LP60 Turntable (hidden behind entertainment center),

Nice looking space you have there. Having a wet bar down there is what is really awesome!

Love the minimalist Mario Bros. wall art. Awesome space.

Very cool space. Soooo, how does a basement have windows? Built into a hill?

Jagosaurus wrote:Very cool space. Soooo, how does a basement have windows? Built into a hill?

Well, there's very small windows at the very top (above ground at grade level basically), but you can do egress windows too if we wanted to make the space a legal bedroom. The windows are really small though, we just have the full length curtains down there to make it feel a little less basementy.

Dang, that's classy.

Looks very cozy.

I like the minimalist mario pictures as well.

Very elegant.

I like that the crown molding over your tv makes it look like curtains on a theater stage.

fastbilly1 wrote:I like that the crown molding over your tv makes it look like curtains on a theater stage.

Ugh, really? We can't stand it! Actually the whole thing that the TV is mounted on to begin with is the weirdest thing we've ever seen. It's a poured concrete wall, but in front of the foundation (our foundation is a block foundation), that was hand molded to LOOK like brick.

The next step is gonna be painting the interior part of it (where mario, luigi and the tv are hanging) black, and painting the "brick" part dark gray. Hopefully that will make it disappear a bit more and help the TV and posters pop. We also are searching for the perfect 8' x 10' low pile area rug to put down in the middle to help set off the seating/gaming/Packer game watching area and hide the big ugly seam in the carpet. We've tried a couple different smaller rugs, and they just don't quite get the job done.

Thanks for all your compliments guys! It's my sanctuary.