I got fired up about doing some more work on the basement, so I thought I would start on the bar area. We are trying to save a bit of cash, so we’re going to reuse the existing bar, and paint out the bead-board, or wainscoting, or whatever it’s called.
I really don’t want to be spending a lot of time on this right now; It’s summer and I’ve got plenty of work to do outside, but I need to do something to get that space usable. We’ve decided just to get it working with plumbing, electrical, drywall done.
So I got all the rough ins done
(Yes, I know the sink is not properly vented, but I have to leave a surprise or two for the next owner don’t I? …mind you, I can fix that really easily with an AAV (Air Admittance Vent) or ‘cheater vent’)
and I got all the drywall up
But not before finding another present from the previous remodeller…
Seems it was too hard to run the power in the wall, so they just ran it along the baseboards. Awesome. 
I fixed as much as I can, but I am not ripping out the rest of that wall. I did remove another 2 feet of drywall, but there’s another 15 feet or so of wall I’m not touching. I wired it properly to a new plug that I placed in a better spot, and I’ll be building a bulkhead to cover in the HVAC and some more of the wire… from that point, I may be able to run the power through the sub-basement and fish it up to the rest of the outlets and fix it right. But for now, it’s staying as is. Oh, and they also walled in a clean-out for the plumbing stack. Nice.
We poured some floor leveller. $45 a bag… stuff is not cheap. I was surprised by how fast it went from really, really runny to not flowing at all… way sooner than I was expecting, and subsequently, I’m not totally happy with the results. Next time I’m adding more than the recommended amount of water. Sure, it will weaken the final product, but not sure by how much… I’ll let you know. Mind you, I was pouring a very thin layer, so perhaps that’s why it didn’t flow right. Any tips for next time would be appreciated!
Once I had the rough counter top in, I hooked up all the plumbing… was just planning to cut in the sink, but figured I better check if my poorly vented sink actually drained (it’s about 7′ away from the vented stack) … and it works pretty good… no backup/slowness at all.
I was going to get oak plywood, to match the rest of the oaky-ness of the bar, but at $80 a sheet, I thought it would be cheaper to go with rough 3/4 then get some veneer…. but adding up that cost (after the fact) it would actually be more expensive. lol nice. Soooo we are just going to sand down the rough plywood and stain/finish that… or put on tiles or something else… Apparently I’ll spend a dime to save a nickel… or however that saying goes.
Wifey got tired of hearing my bitch about not having a table saw, so she bought me one for my b-day! It’s awesome. The stand that it came with folds up into a wheeled cart, so it’s a breeze to set up, tear down, and move that saw around. All of the accessories (rip fence, blade guard, etc) have a spot to clip into and stow securely during transport. It’s got a port for dust collection, so I plugged the shop vac hose in the back of it, and there was almost no dust from the cuts. Awesome awesome.
So ‘part one’ of the bar is wrapping up… we’re just going to put a finish on the counter top, add some flooring, and move in the fridge. It’s a bit ‘out of sequence’ but I really don’t want to start mudding and taping now… especially since I don’t have the ceiling done, nor do I have the bulkheads done… and that is far more work than I’m willing to do now. We’ll use it as is, then once I can’t work outdoors anymore, I’ll get back into the drywalling and finish up the basement.
