Help me design my new man cave!

Upstatemax

I’ve been doing some floor shopping recently myself. In my search, a GOOD engineered floor can be more expensive than true hard wood...

I’m narrowing in on a full hardwood, handscraped hickory floor. Tough as nails and if it does get a spot of damage, the hand scraping can help hide it. Lol

I doubt water will be an issue in that room, but it’s worth mentioning that engineered floors can easily and quickly be destroyed if any water gets below the top hardwood layer.

Watched a family member throw away A LOT of flooring thanks to a leaking valve on the back of his refrigerator...

BlueMDPicker

nspindel wrote: »

If you think this is fun, you should see what we’re doing in the backyard!

Tell us more....

nspindel

BlueMDPicker wrote: »

Tell us more....

Well for the cost savings of moving from a condo on the water in downtown out to the burbs, we can afford to build a resort back there and still have plenty leftover. No definite plans yet, other than to start looking around in backyard showrooms! But very grand ideas, that's for sure!

nspindel

So I was packing up my record cleaning equipment, and just had an epiphany. The upstairs has the big room, and another bedroom that we will use as an office for my wife. Each room has a nice size walk in closet. We've already done a large amount of purging when we sold our house in CT. We live in a 2BR apartment right now. We don't have a ton of clutter any more that we need closet space for. We won't even need to fill up the closet in the office, let alone the one in the man cave. So the walk in closet in the man cave just became a record cleaning room! It's not huge, about 35 square feet, but more than enough room for what I'd need! I should also have room for a small electronics bench where I can plop my soldering station. This just keeps getting better and better!

GospelTruth

Awesome looking room. That will be a great place for your audio hobby.

Flooring
Laminate floors are made to float as they will be over some type of sound proofing underlayment.

I've been doing a lot of research and watching guys on youtube put down laminate flooring. My wife is out of the country with the kids, so I'm in the middle of a re-flooring project right now. I just finished ripping out carpet and tile in our master bedroom, bath and closet. I'm going with a "water resistant" laminate for both areas. Going to be laying down the flooring this weekend.

https://www.flooranddecor.com/laminate-laminate/aquaguard-coco-water-resistant-laminate-100085505.html#start=7

Video
While I know you want this to be an audio two channel room, I would think about having video connectivity. Doesn't mean you need 5.1 surround sound. Depending on your sources for music, if you ever want to contemplate putting on your music on a NAS for distribution, you may need a device to stream that music and an application that visual shows you what your a looking at. I have Plex for my multimedia applications. I stream from a Roku (not a typical 2 channel device), and my music is on a NAS. It's nice to be able to search and view all my music through a TV. Just a thought.

Hard wired Ethernet
You may want to think about putting in a hard wire for Ethernet if you can or if the house doesn't have it already. Depends where your router will be in the house and if you can route wire at all (maybe through the attic. I find it's easier to stream over hard wire rather than wireless as that can hiccup sometimes. Again, depends if you want to have a music source be over the web or on a local NAS.

Have fun!

GospelTruth

Awesome looking room. That will be a great place for your audio hobby.

Flooring
Laminate floors are made to float as they will be over some type of sound proofing underlayment.

I've been doing a lot of research and watching guys on youtube put down laminate flooring. My wife is out of the country with the kids, so I'm in the middle of a re-flooring project right now. I just finished ripping out carpet and tile in our master bedroom, bath and closet. I'm going with a "water resistant" laminate for both areas. Going to be laying down the flooring this weekend.

https://www.flooranddecor.com/laminate-laminate/aquaguard-coco-water-resistant-laminate-100085505.html#start=7

Video
While I know you want this to be an audio two channel room, I would think about having video connectivity. Doesn't mean you need 5.1 surround sound. Depending on your sources for music, if you ever want to contemplate putting on your music on a NAS for distribution, you may need a device to stream that music and an application that visual shows you what your a looking at. I have Plex for my multimedia applications. I stream from a Roku (not a typical 2 channel device), and my music is on a NAS. It's nice to be able to search and view all my music through a TV. Just a thought.

Hard wired Ethernet
You may want to think about putting in a hard wire for Ethernet if you can or if the house doesn't have it already. Depends where your router will be in the house and if you can route wire at all (maybe through the attic. I find it's easier to stream over hard wire rather than wireless as that can hiccup sometimes. Again, depends if you want to have a music source be over the web or on a local NAS.

Have fun!

shawn474

You could get solid core doors for that closet to really limit the noise coming from the air handler.

FestYboy

And to continue to thought from @shawn474 , a wall rug would help 2 fold with the beige color, AND the sound, as well as hide the doors from view to help with the Fung shui of the space.

mrloren

Nice room there, can't wait to see it completed.

GospelTruth

I tried posting my reply yesterday, hit post and it disappeared. I figured it went to the vanilla vacuum. Guess it didn't and posted today at 6:14am - and twice for that matter. Weird.

Admin can delete one of those posts as I cannot anymore.

nspindel

This is looking like the winner. Solid 3/4" Acacia in a natural finish. With an acoustic underlayment to help keep things nice and quiet downstairs!

Upstatemax

Looks nice!

Only thing I can say, with hand scraped floors, you basically HAVE to put spikes right on the floor. the inconsistent floor surface is a PIA if you try and use anything like isolation discs or "spike plates".

The harder the floor, the better they deal with spikes right on them. I have had experience with hickory floors that have no problem. Just DO NOT drag anything!!

haha.

txcoastal1

That's really nice

nspindel

Hadn't thought about the spikes on the wavy hand scrape floors. What about when you're leveling whatever it is you've got spiked? You spin the spikes on the floor directly??

nspindel

I'm going to have to do that part of the project when my wife's not around...

Frank, how much weight have you sat on spikes directly on the wood? I'm worried some heavy gear is going to be pushing down, and it'll leave something not so pretty...

Upstatemax

I think the heaviest thing we have done that with; Totem Element Fire speakers on Target heavy series stands.

If I had to guess, each speaker and stand combo is about 40-45 pounds.

I have not seen them make a single mark in the hickory floors.

However, the beautiful thing about hand scraped floors, small little spots are basically invisible!

txcoastal1

I use spikes on discs. I raise and lower my Timber Nation stands with a mini pallet jack from Northern Tools

You could also do a combo floor

3' of carpet both ends 12" to 18" on the long sides, wood in the middle....would also help with the dust bunnies

If the carpet you have is in good shape have them cut a rectangle out of the middle and tack edging and insert wood

nspindel

Well, that's true too. These are Acacia. But I'm sure this stuff will be heavier. The SDAs on Larry's stands, if they can stand up to the size of the room, are pretty heavy. But the tiger maple rack with the turntable and tube amp is some heavy gear, and the rack is spiked. And the spikes on the rack are SHARP!

txcoastal1

txcoastal1

Excuse the dust, room still in a bit of havoc from the storm, plus storing my daughters stuff till they move down here in a couple weeks, but you get the idea

nooshinjohn

Black granite slab On the floor under the equipment would be a nice touch.

nspindel

Yeah, I was already thinking that.

lightman1

Stripper pole in the back half. Get tired of staring at the gear? Spin your chair around and check out the show....

nooshinjohn

I would do it big enough to provide a level base under the speakers as well, thus eliminating damage to the floors.

nspindel

Problem with one big slab is it locks the speakers into a certain location next to the audio rack. Makes playing with speaker placement impossible unless you get one big a $ $ piece of granite. Thinking three smaller pieces would be the way to go.

nspindel

Somehow I managed to misplace the keys to my storage locker! All my gear, locked in storage, and I lose the mother <Vanilla won't let me finish...>ing keys. It's one of the tubular locks with the circular key.

I figured I was going to need to drill out the lock. I started looking up youtube videos to see exactly how to do it, and happened upon a video for a lock pick tool especially for the tubular locks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX5ma2DVksU

I couldn't resist, so I looked and sure enough, it's right there with next day Amazon Prime delivery for $19.99. The lock pick kit arrived yesterday. I went to my storage locker last night with a new lock, and no joke, that tubular lock was out in 5 seconds. Not even a challenge. If you use these tubular locks.... find another lock!

BlueMDPicker

Perhaps good karma that you lost the key, Neil?
Glad you sorted it out. Thanks for sharing, good info to know.

nspindel

The only karma part is learning to use a different kind of lock. Although any lock can be defeated, I always thought these tubular ones were a complete pain and so were relatively secure since bolt cutters can’t be used. So much for that idea.

Viking64

I prefer tubular bells to tubular locks.

FestYboy

Love me some 8-track