House Post: Dawn of the Man Cave

I don't have anything like a coherent write-up for you, sorry. But I will share a before and an in-progress photo of the current project that is taking up all my free time: the conversion of a weird back room of the house to a man cave for my husband.

(I already have an office and a library/craft room, so it's only fair!)

Here is the before, from the real estate listing.

Oh, yes.

What are you looking at?

Let me make you a list: a cardboard fake-drop ceiling, fluorescent shop lights, faux-wood particle board paneling, the ugliest curtains you have ever seen, a GIANT bar (5' deep, 4' tall, 10' wide), asbestos tiles, and utility carpet.

Yeah.

It's 12x20, so not a small space, and it's the room by which we enter the house - the door you can see just at the right edge of this photograph goes out to the back deck and to the driveway. It has until recently served as a sort of dumping ground. My husband put a lot of his stuff back there but since it also had no heat source it wasn't a terribly useful or comfortable room.

So, what have we done to it?

That's pretty much the same view, just zoomed out a little more, and centered instead of aimed left.

We have:
- torn out the old paneling and the sheetrock underneath and the crappy fiberglass insulation underneath that
- torn out the old ceiling
- cut out all the old shelving and the weird bar thing
- pulled up the old carpet
- picked up the old tile (yes, it's asbestos; they are all intact, not crumbling, and were no longer glued to the floor. I picked them up carefully with gloves and a respirator, double-bagged them, and consulted with the local waste management district on a hazardous waste disposal plan)
- pulled out the old fluorescent lighting
- replaced the old insulation with Roxul for a higher R-value, added an extra layer of insulation to the ceiling
- put up a vapor barrier (nonexistent before)
- dropped (most of) the outlets from the middle of the wall to the floor (you can see them if you squint)
- added recessed lighting to the ceiling
- replaced the old sheetrock with new

Still to do:
- finish sealing off the window & door frames with foam
- remove the staples from the ceiling strapping, put up vapor barrier, put up sheetrock
- mud and paint everything
- replace the flooring; currently deciding between carpet and tile w/ area rugs
- reframe windows & door
- decide on a heat source: space heater? baseboard electric? extend the radiator system?
- furnishing; we will need a pull out loveseat and a dry bar

LONG term still to do:
- insulate the floor; this is part of the godawful crawlspace project that I am trying to pretend doesn't need to be done but really will have to be on the schedule for next summer, ugh.

Total time elapsed so far: about 4 weeks; maybe about 7 solid days of work within those weeks.

I have lots of process pictures so in weeks to come I'll go into more details about the pieces of this project. I hope (?) that by January we will have a finished space.