Ron Patton's Basement Transformation

 
 

 

All Done

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Here's the view looking up the stairs from the "lobby". They turn to the right, entering the kitchen upstairs.

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Here we are in the lobby. The stairs are to the right of the door. The door leads to a home theater. The Yukon House sign is from the Northern Exposure TV show. We bought it at an auction after the show was cancelled in 1995. The sign appears in the Cicely episode from the 3rd season.

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Turning around a bit we see the "wall-o-beer", a collection of 193 different beer bottles. There's also a built-in antique phone booth and the door to the bathroom.

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Ron's Dad acquired the 1955 mahogany booth from a court house in Grove City, PA. Ron took it via pickup truck to TN and then it was moved to WA. Yes, the phone works!

MVC-139F.JPG (81355 bytes) Just to the left of the beer wall is the jukebox, stocked with 100 CD's. Ron bought the jukebox from a dealer in FL. 
MVC-156F.JPG (62989 bytes) Tucked into the stairwell is the pinball machine and visitor's chair. Ron bought the 1990 game from a dealer in Eugene, Oregon.
MVC-140F.JPG (44916 bytes) What would a pub/bar/game-room be without a urinal?  Well, the restroom has one. The sales person at Eagle Hardware told Ron it was the first one she had ever sold.
MVC-144F.JPG (59143 bytes) Leaving the lobby and entering the main section you see the pool table, traffic light, spectator chair, and closets.
MVC-146F.JPG (70160 bytes) Backing up a bit brings in the card table and the other Northern Exposure sign. This one is also from the Cicely episode and is 14 feet long!
MVC-148F.JPG (57598 bytes) The wet bar - cabinets, convection/microwave oven, fridge/icemaker, sink, hot water dispenser, and stem glass holder. 
MVC-150F.JPG (43627 bytes) Just to the right of the wet bar is a closet leading to the back of the home theater components shelves.  A 1921 player piano is on the right.
MVC-152F.JPG (52499 bytes) The piano is from the John and Florence Filby estate in PA. They were good friends of the family and when the son sold the house and moved away, Ron's Mom and Dad bought it and several hundred rolls and had them shipped to WA. Carl Kehret rebuilt the player mechanism and it now plays great!
MVC-153F.JPG (44862 bytes) To the right of the piano is a neon sign, a pellet stove, and an electronic dart board.
MVC-154F.JPG (49450 bytes) Behind the piano and across from the wet bar is a 9 foot shuffle board table.

 

So here's where I get to brag. We have the coolest basement game-room around!  We haven't seen anything even close to this, even at the Street of Dreams homes ($$$million dollar tour of homes).

And it was all designed and built by us!  The only professional help was the engineer to design the support beam, a contractor to assist with raising it, and a sheetrock finisher to help hang the rock and finish it off.

I can't say I'd recommend doing this yourself unless you are, or want to become, pretty handy with tools.  But if you do want to tackle such a project, here's something to shoot for.

And, oh, other than some minor decorating things, the room was completed on December 15th, 1999, two weeks early!  

Time to party...