The next picture is what was a hallway to the bathroom. Steve and I closed that up and made a closet out of it. Everyone knows how much I like to build walls so this was a huge treat for me. After it was finished Steve put shelves in the closet so I could take everything out of the guest closet upstairs and put it down there so I am a happy person.
Here is the room in it's finished state Unfortunately I am a horrible photographer. This room did not come without it's issues. You can read about the table and chair issue in later blogs but we had to make sure the rug was centered in the room and the table was centered on the rug. Then we changed the light fixture because the old one was not centered above the table so we got this one and that meant centering the light above the table, the table on the rug and the rug in the room. It wasn't pretty.
To the left is the framed in bathroom in the lower level. Again, this was the way the builders left the room in December 2008. To the right side of this picture would have been the hallway that went to the game room which is now a closet. We should have probably put one closet in the game room and another in the bathroom, kind of back to back. Oh Well. As you look down you will see the room after the drywall people where here. What a mess. As you recall, we were told that the bathroom had rough plumbing put in so when we cut off the pipe ends to hook up the shut off wales there was not water so we thought we had done a super job. It was however odd that there wasn't a drop of water when we cut off the pipes so we went to the other side of the wall to learn that there was no water attached to those popes at all so we needed to call in the plumber. Below is the finished room min us some decorations. They will arrive after a trip to IKEA sometime soon.
Now let's look back a bit to the work in the family room. Steve and I vowed that we'd never, ever hang another suspended ceiling but here we are again. Having all the utilities on the one side of the basement we knew that as soon as we had the ceiling dry walled we'd have a leak. We didn't want a suspended ceiling but we thought it was best.
Let's look back;
The first picture is looking from the stairway to the workshop (door at the back of the picture. The little nook to the left way at the back is where you will see our kitchen-bar handy work. If you look carefully to the right you will see an opening that is the hallway going to the bathroom and the game room.
The next picture is a shot from the bar looking toward the hallway leading to the bathroom and game room. The next picture is basically the same shot but with some dry wall hung. As you can see, a little dry wall will make a room look a little bit better but be prepared for a pile of junk you have to pick up. It took us days to haul our left over dry wall and hunks of plaster.
The next picture is a shot from the bar area toward the hallway that leads to the game room and bath. The next picture is pretty much the same shot but with plastered walls. You have no idea what a mess Steve and I had to clean up after the dry wall people Left. Not only did they leave a huge mess but they sprung the closure on our storm door and scraped up the paint on the front door. Being as mean as I can be I refused to pay the balance of the work until they came back and cleaned the front door off and fixed the storm door which they did but it still does not close properly.
The next picture is pretty much as the first one, a shot from the bottom of the stairs all they way across the book to the door into the work shop. As you look at that picture you will see a nook on the left side which you will soon see is the kitchen-bar. We wanted it to be a bar but it actually turned into a kitchen and a bar. It will work well for placing food and drinks when we have a large group. You will see as we go how much work Steve and I put into the kitchen-bar area. 
This nook is where you will finally see the bar-kitchen. The door to the right is once again to the work shop.
Finally, you will see a final shot of us putting up the suspended ceiling. Again, we will never do this again. We bought plastic track this time thinking it would be easier to deal with but although it was lighter forcing the plastic tabs into place was a horrible job. If I could give some advice, stick with the metal tracks as they do not flex like this as you work across the room. 
The bar took us several weeks to complete. We bought standard cabinets and put them together to form a kitchen-bar. We kind of missed the mark on the bar look but once we get all the bottles up and items on the wall it will look more like a bar. Keep in mind that Steve and I have done cabinetry work before and we're not sure it we liked it or not. The most difficult part was getting the corners square. We did run into one small issue when we put the trim in but we'll keep that a secret. The next picture is Steve putting the cabinet doors on again and adjusting them so everything was in line. With these cabinets these adjustments can be difficult to say the least. We have them all aligned. 
The next picture is Steve placing the sink unit into place. That was not really a big deal, at first. As the process continued we found that we had to make a couple additional notches in the bottom of the cabinet to accommodate the plumbing pipes that cam out of the floor. That was an easy fix and we're glad we did that because had we left it as is the counter top would not have fit in properly. I guess one issue leads into another if you don't do things correctly from the start. We took that cabinet out a few times in order to get it into the corner and made it line up with the walls and fit around the popes. Let's just say, the plumber came back and hooked up the bar sink and faucet. 
This was the difficult part. We did not want an empty corner so we bought a lazy susan for the corner. It was a piece of junk and made squaring up the cabinets a real trick for us. Just when we got the other cabinets lines up the lazy susan would shift a tiny bit and throw us off. That plus the pitch of the floor to the drain made for some tense moments. Believe me, susan is not going anywhere.
The next part was to put a wall behind the cabinets. Steve wanted to build the wall first but I told him that if the counter top is not exactly square of the susan threw us off we'd have more issues. We then had to worry about the counter top that would create the bar part. It has quite an overhand to it so it was a trick figuring out how to make sure it was stung enough so it did not tip down when people where sitting there. I did not want braces under it so we built a wall, my favorite thing to do you know. After we got done with that and placed the top on believe me it is not going to tip anywhere and that wall will never be moved again without explosives. As you can see in the next picture Steve and I put very nice quality plywood onto the front of the bar so we could place the tiles on without them bubbling up or not meeting up nicely. We were so proud of ourselves to get that put up and everything lines up just great and we were ready for the tiles. What an exciting time. 
Now it was time to place the tiles on and put the finishing touches on things. Steve went down one night while I was watching television and places all the tiles on an angle just to mix things up a bit. I went down to see a very fine job. It really looked nice as you can see below. We left the work site for the night and came down the following day to check on things and to do some work. Something looked wrong with the front of the bar. AS it turned out, all the white tiles fell off the front of the bar directly under where they were supposed to be stuck. Steve was not so happy, I just grinned. It was odd, the black tiles stayed on but the white tiles just fell off. We pulled off all the white tiles and used some super glue stuff to put them back on. Believe me, they are not going to come off anytime soon.
The final picture is the finished project minus the light fixtures we hung over the bar. That was not an easy job putting up an "S" shaped fixture on a grid ceiling. As usual, Steve figured it out with some naughty words but it's done. We have more cabinets in this kitchen than we have in our entire house in Florida. Behind the bar are several banks of drawers, countless cabinets, Susan and two under counter refrigerators. The refrigerators did not fit under the counters as we planned so we had to build bases for them to sit on. They really turned out nicely. More finished pictures of this area are still to come.
KIND OF THERE
Just when Steve said he would not mess with a suspended celling again here he is again this time taking it apart. We had to put lights above the pool table and as you all know, they have to be centered and centered they are. We had to measure from the wall in hopes it was straight and then punch holes in the tiles to put in the lights. Of course each one hit right where the braces crossed. Each hole was ending up in the same spot on all three tiles then it dawned on us , each tile is square and we wanted them spaced equally across the table so of course they'd end up in the same spot on each tile, Duh !. The next picture is a bit premature. Steve and I continued our running tournament from our old house with a score of about 280 tor Steve and 3 for me. I really stink at this but I can beat him at backgammon any day, any time. . There is a story about the sconces on the wall. They were kind of a last minute decision so we thought, Oh shoot let's do it. We made our five hundredth trip to Menards to get them and tried to figure out what wall we wanted them on. We finally agreed but I wanted them to come on with the lights over the pool table and not with another switch. We have so many switches I can't remember what they are all for. As usual, Steve went along with it as he usually does so we punched holes in the wall and ran the wires from what will eventually become a small home theater. Steve wanted to tack the wires to the studs and I said no, that was not to code and eventually when we fix up the other side of this wall I will no doubt hit the wire and kill myself. He let me drill the 7 holes in the studs to string the wires through. Unfortunately, my holes are not on a nice level line but go up hill from the right sconce to the left one but I got them done. Steve did the first one and pulled the insulation out and wrapped it around the drill like cotton candy. It was cute and a bit funny. We strung our wires as I wanted and you can see the results. We really love them. The next picture is from the sconce wall to the bar. our can see that things turned out fairly well if I do say so myself. The wall next to the shop door will hold my autographed poster from Amy Grant along with a picture of Amy when she came to our house for a meet and greet. She really is a lovely and sweet woman. The next poster will be two that I bid on at the Council for the Performing Arts auction both signed by The Lettermen. Next to that will be a photo of Steve and I with Tony Butala (The only original Lettermen still in the
group) Next to that will be a vinyl Lettermen album I have with the three original Lettermen on it. I might even look for an Amy Grant album.
Along with that will be autographed tickets from Gunner and Matthew Nelson, the sons of Ricky Nelson. Steve had them autographed for me while I was in Florida and missed their concert. We plan to put all the posters between two layers of Plexiglas so they don't get touched at all. The first Lettermen poster cost me $350 at; the auction but I also have several bottles of personally autographed Tony Butala wines that I won't let anyone drink. Now the goal is to get Barbra's pictures personally signed by her. I will get that done before I die, or she does.
The next picture is a temporary "setting" of the furniture. We've put the two sofas so many different directions you have no clue. Yesterday we spent six hours or there about at IKEA and let me say that we could hardly get all the stuff into my car. We had our niece Jodi with us who also hit the store pretty hard. Steve and I bought a bunch of things to hang up in the room along with a television stand which we put together tonight along with a coffee table. We still have two ;box shelf units to assemble for the game room. That should be a hoot.
So having a new television stand down there meant we needed a new television. I told Steve I thought it was stupid to put the new television down there so let's put the new one in the living room and the old one from the living room down there. The old one is a plasma and my God it weighed a ton. We dot it down stairs and put the new one together in the living room. Tomorrow we will run 100 feet of television cable across the entire basement then down the wall to the old television. I will be in charge of fishing the cable behind the wall because seeing cords makes me nuts. That will be an all day job. I forgot, all of my life I have wanted a sofa table behind a sofa. We also have one of those to assemble and put behind the sofa. I am so excited. I also wanted a large vase with sticks in it. May sound funny but you will see shortly how it looks. WE found the neatest wine racks that we will put on the wall and Jodi made us buy all sorts of different kinds of glasses because we certainly could not serve a drink in the wrong glass. We already have tons of glasses down there so we'll have to figure that out. Stay tuned to this blog posting for final pictures.
And the Unveiling
