My Old Basement Gameroom

One of the biggest issues was my gameroom didn’t feel like it had its own “identity”.  The other side of the room housed my TV and console systems and with nothing separating the two sections the whole area felt like one huge mess.  My wife and I decided that putting up a pony wall between the two sections would be the best way to give some separation while at the same time not closing in either of the spaces with a full height wall.

The pony wall is up.

I had a good friend come by and help me out with the pony wall construction.  In actuality he put up the wall and about all I did to help was get materials and put up drywall.  What can I say, I wanted to help but when you have a friend in construction its easier just to let him go at it and not get in the way!

Drywall installed.

See all of that brown carpet?  All of that had to come up to make way for our new laminate flooring.  Since this is a basement I couldn’t install hardwood.  Carpet wasn’t an option as well so we opted for laminate flooring.  We had no idea what we are getting ourselves into but we knew we had our work cut out for us.  Our basement is not one huge box; we have a closet, a little tiny boxed in area in the corner of the room and the new pony wall that had to get flooring.  Our first step was to remove the carpet and start laying down the underlayment.

Underlayment down and carpet removed.

See the closet with our A/C unit to the left in the picture above?  That is one of the obstacles we had to plan for.  Here is another one:

Since we were laying the laminate down on this side of the room first, this little area had to be done before anything else.  We had to measure the depth of the laminate and it had to just meet the edge of the wall so that the long run of laminate would hook into this little corner.  It seemed daunting at first but thanks to my wife’s careful planning and attention to detail we successfully navigated the first challenge.

Success!!

Those little black wedges you see in the picture above are spacers that were used to keep an expansion gap around the flooring.  This is a floating floor so we had to leave at least a 1/4″ gap all the way around.  We also had to make sure that our laminate would go under the door casings so that meant a lot of cutting with an undercut saw.  Since the door casings would not be covered with quarter round we had to measure the planks to that they fit under perfectly.  We had a transition piece that would go from the laminate to the exposed concrete floor in my workshop area so the laminate had to be just the right length.

Here is how we ran the laminate under the door casing

After getting it under the door casing we were able to run a lot more of the flooring until we got to our next obstacle, the closet doors.  Here is our first attempt with the laminate:

The problem with laying it this way is our closet doors would not cover the laminate.  We knew we would have to move the closet doors forward but after this first attempt we knew the doors wouldn’t cover the flooring.  I also didn’t want to see the transition piece so we knew we had to backtrack and tackle this area again.  I re-cut more laminate and did it again and this time ended up with satisfactory results:

Success!

Now the laminate is in the middle of the door casing.  Once I installed the transition piece there would be a smooth transition with no view of the vinyl floor inside the closet.  Now that we successfully navigated this obstacle we were ready for the next one,  the new pony wall.  We had to wrap the laminate around the column with the proper gap around the entire pony wall.   After accomplishing what we thought was impossible previously we made short work and got it right the first try.

Let's just pretend you didn't see this...

The gap in the picture above is a bit bigger than we planned for but the quarter round would cover it with space to spare:

Gap? What gap!

After getting past the pony wall the rest was pretty easy.  The only remaining obstacle was the steps leading up and out of the basement.  We removed the old, dingy carpet that was there and decided to install laminate on the stairs as well.  The risers (the vertical piece of wood) was not in the best of shape so we cut new ones and installed on top of the old.  Since we were doing every stair this was an appropriate installation method but before we could install the new risers we had to cut the treads (the horizontal piece of wood that you step on) even with the existing risers.  This was an interesting task.  The professionals take a circular saw and after marking the tread they proceed with a plunge cut to remove the excess tread material.  Since the circular saw is my least favorite power tool I went with a messy but easier way.

I bought a 1.5″ straight router bit (with a bearing) and cut the wood away manually.  There were two downsides to this method.  First it was a lot of work, each tread had to be trimmed.  The second but most important issue is all of the mess it would make!  I didn’t think of that before I already started cutting and it left tons of wood dust under the stairs which got all over everything packed up down there.  Oh well a small price to pay for safety from my arch enemy the circular saw.

The new risers installed.

The completed staircase from above. What a beauty!

Now we have a separate area for the arcade and the TV/MOVIE/Video Game recreation area.  This is probably the most rewarding project we have accomplished.  Not only did we do the installation ourselves, we also proved that we could handle a huge project with minimal mistakes.  It makes the gameroom a place the entire family wants to be.  I haven’t started putting up posters and pictures yet except for my Dragon’s Lair poster but that will be the next step in the evolution of our basement gameroom.  Here are a few more shots of the finished area:

Here is how the closet doors came out, you can't see the transition between the laminate and the vinyl floor.

You can see all of the renovation pictures here at a much higher resolution:  http://gallery.metahugh.com/main.php?g2_itemId=30725

For example I had Arcade Game and Restoration categories both of which had a separate category for each game I had restored.  That meant having two categories for Dr Who or Burgertime for example.  I was attempting to make it easy to separate the posts regarding a game specific restoration versus the misc posts about that same game.  I ended up having pages of categories which was a bit confusing the manage.  I have removed all of the game specific categories and have condensed it back into a much more simple configuration.   I already feel relieved!

Also the visual style was a bit crazy in my opinion.  I generally liked the theme I had been using for the past few months but I find myself gravitation towards a more simplistic design.  What you see right now is currently what I am going with.

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/216511/apple-closes-in-on-nintendo-portables-in-u-s/

At least the first commenter has some common sense.  Using Gamepro’s logic we should include all other phones with games.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of having games on a device that I carry with me at all times, but Apple and other smartphone manufacturers have a long, long way to go before they can be officially called gaming devices.

Overall I am very happy with the 474A+.  Last night I put it through a torture test; removing the 40 pin interconnect on a System 6 CPU and driver board!  Everyone dreads removing this connector it seems.  So with this in mind I decided to tackle the CPU board first.  I have the dial on the unit set to roughly 65% of the dial’s movement. I went from pin to pin and had no issues desolderingevery hole including the outer holes.  With a slight push they came right out.  So far so good, next up the driver board.

The 474A+ worked excellent on every pin minus the outside pins which I expected.  Pins 1, 2, 39 and 40 were not being desoldered without a fight!  With the dial set to 65% the 474A+ just didn’t have the juice to melt the solder.  Since these pins are on the ground plane of the board I knew they would be trouble since they just suck up the heat and keep on trucking.  No big deal I still have another 35% travel left I thought, so I cranked it up to 75%… still not doing it.  I cranked it up all the way and believe it or not I was still having issues!  Here is where I can find one fault with this station;  with the heat cranked up past 90% you can feel a lot of heat coming from the plastic sections of the gun itself.  Its hot enough that it is not comfortable to use and really doesn’t seem safe.  Here is where a bit of technique comes into play.

I took my Weller WESD51 and cranked it up to 750 degrees.  I flowed some new solder onto those stubborn pins, putting much more than would be there under normal circumstances just to make sure that I could sap a lot of heat into the joints.  Then I turned the 474A+ back down to 65% and started desoldering.  This did the trick!  The extra, new solder helped get the join hot enough that it desoldered immediately. I sucked up the molten solder and the connector dropped right out! YAY!  So this goes to show that even with a desoldering station you still have to have a bit of know how.

Another interesting thing to note, after removing that much solder about halfway through the gun was making a kind of wheezing sound. The reason is further back into the tip of the gun some solder was stuck and the air being sucked into the nozzle was making that weird sound.  Every now and then you need to take the tip cleaning tool and push any latent solder into the collection tube.  This is a minor inconvenience but worth noting.  I thought I remembered from another post someone mentioning that they liked the older, short tips better and now I understand why.  This tool is not for the lazy.  You need to clean the tip after each use and make sure to check the collection tube for old solder and clean it out.  I haven’t had this unit for that long but as with anything preventive maintenance is never a bad thing.

So in summary I am very happy with my Aoyue 474A+.  It has done an excellent job for me.  I have no problems recommending this to anyone that wants a cheap desoldering station as part of their tool set.

KLOV – For the soldering experts… How to fix a big mistake?

WOWSA!

Yeah that big bit of silver at the bottom of the picture is solder!

I searched for various desoldering stations and initially I looked for the name brands that I am familiar with like Weller, Hakko and Metcal.  I have had excellent experience with my Weller WESD51 soldering station so why not look for a Weller?  New low end Weller desoldering stations like the WDD81X are around $635 and up!  I definitely didn’t want to spend that much money and similar Hakko and Metcal stations are just as pricey.  Hakko makes an 808 all in one desoldering gun for around $175.  Much better but still more than I wanted to spend.

Enter Aoyue.  I found the 474A+ on sale for $115 plus shipping at Stan Rubenstein and Associates Inc.  So after using this for a few days what one word can I use to describe this station?  AWESOME! I don’t know how I lived without this in the past.  Using desoldering braid or a soldapullt is OK but not consistent.  The first time I fired up the 474A+ and desoldered my first set of 24 pins I fell in love.  It works so good and is so fast.  Here is the first socket I desoldered:

24 pin socket BEFORE desoldering. Notice the one hole I successfully desoldered with braid...

And after using the 474A+

Look Mama I've got HOLES in me, holes I say!

And the second socket:

The second socket completed

It works VERY well.  My only complaint is that I can’t tell from looking at the dial what temperature the gun is at.  The dial only shows 1-8 (See picture below)

Also the manual doesn’t tell you way too much.  For example it comes with some Silicone grease but doesn’t tell you what to do with it.  I know its used to clean the tip but when do you apply it?  When the unit is on or off?  That is something else to figure out.

In the package you receive:

• 474 Station
• Desoldering Gun
• Filter pads 6pcs
• Silicone Grease
• Filter pipe
• Nozzle cleaning pins
• Power cord
• Desoldering gun holder

Overall I am very happy with the 474A+.  I will post up a follow up in the future after I have tackled the 40 pin interconnect (80 pins) on my Firepower CPU and Driver boards.  If it survives that test I have no problems recommending it to anyone

There are more pictures of the 474A+ in my gallery:

http://gallery.metahugh.com/main.php?g2_itemId=2771