Construction Complete
May 17, 2001
 
This week should see the completion of construction. It's about time. Since my last installment, painting has been completed. The only remaining painting work is a little touch-up here and there, but we plan to wait until after the carpet installers do their worst before getting that done. The bathroom is also complete with the tub, toilet, vanity with sink, and all fixtures installed. The plumbers finished their work on this a few days ago, and Steve did the tile work. The waste pump seems to do its job just fine. The pump turns out to be almost inaudible when operating, so I suppose insulating the closet where it is installed was overkill. The plumbers also lowered the water heater off its stand. The stand was unnecessary since code only requires it if the water heater is in a garage with flammable liquids. We hope that we will get a better flue draft since we have more rise on the flue pipe. The water heater is now sitting in a metal pan supported on 2" wood blocks. The purpose of the pan is to catch any leaks and drain the water into the A/C condensate line. I also plan to put a water sensor in the pan to detect leaks early and set off an alarm. Hopefully all this will prevent another basement flood. The final electrical work is also complete. The electricians installed all the breakers in the panel, and added switches and plug outlets. They also installed a ceiling fan in the bedroom (which we purchased), and we had them use Decora light switches throughout. We think these look much nicer, and they are only slightly more expensive. Plus, they will be a better match for the Lightolier switches I intend to use in the theater. Also done over the past week was the installation of the odds and ends like doorknobs and light fixtures including sconces in the stairway. I am slowly working through installing the low voltage wall plates. I added an alarm switch to the new basement door, and installed a smoke detector and siren speaker in the basement hallway to finish out the alarm system. We finally found sconces for the theater. We found them at Progressive Lighting. We paid more that we wanted, but they are really just right for our theater. I'll post photos when we get them installed. Steve finished up the raised platform for the rear row of seats yesterday. It turned out just right. We included stair lighting on the one step up onto the platform for effect, and added a plug outlet to the front of the platform. This will provide power to whatever I might want to plug in behind the front row of seats (Dreamcast, PS2 maybe?). There is also PVC conduit running from the wiring closet to the face of the platform so I can add whatever low voltage cables I might need later. Steve is also working on the bar and should be ready to install it by early next week. The remainder of this week will be consumed by "final things." I'm planning to pick up the PC I had custom built for the theater today. Basically this PC will serve as the video driver for the projector. I plan to use it as a video scaler (line doubler) for TV, progressive scan DVD player, and probably HDTV tuner. Apparently a properly equipped PC can do all these things as well as or better than dedicated components as a fraction of the price. The tradeoff is having to deal with the vagaries of a PC running Windoze. We had scheduled carpet installation for next week, but then we got the estimate for the theater carpet. It was not pretty. Apparently good black carpet is hard to find and absurdly expensive. We are considering some changes to the raised platform so we don't have so much waste carpet, but for now the carpet work is on hold until we figure out something reasonable. This means we had to put off fabric work in the theater until the first of next month. Furthermore, I'm still waiting for NEC Japan to send me parts I ordered for my XG-1100 projector, so it is beginning to look like the grand opening will be in mid-June at the soonest. http://www.newton.org/images/pictures/Basement/Platform_Rough.jpegshapeimage_2_link_0