• This Forum is for adults 18 years of age or over. By continuing to use this Forum you are confirming that you are 18 or older. No content shall be viewed by any person under 18 in California.

Building new reloading room in basement: Update 2/23

PBking51

Gold $$ Contributor
2/23...paint is on and lights hooked up! Id give myself about a B+ on spackling. But I am very happy with the amount of light in the room and still don't have a center light picked out or mounted yet. Because of the <7' ceiling height I think I will get a low profile LED "flush mount" similar to those members shared.

I decided to leave 1 wall white for added brightness and for taking nice pictures of guns next time I have to sell to buy a new one or for diaper money, haha. I plan on buying one of those 48" folding wall mounted benches for the white wall. This will aid in working on guns and also save on space.

I will be moving my stuff down there today but will be putting off building all my shelving and start focusing on my wife who is due in 7 days!



Thanks for all the help/comments. Sheetrock is up as of 2/13...i guess I will update as I go in case anyone is curious. Thanks again to everyone who gave me suggestions, ideas, comments, support, and even constructive criticism.


Hi all...before I get in too deep with expensive materials I figured I would ask for some advise. I have a smaller 1300 sq ft two story home with a nice 11x13 room with a bow window on the first floor that I have one of the harbor freight benches set up. The room is mine and has everything from a computer on a 1950s industrial desk (inside the bow window area) to the bench, a small gun cabinet all my hunting gear and stackable bins with parts, cases of primers, random gun related junk.

We are having our first child due in about 5 weeks and all the baby stuff fills up more than the second story bedroom so I thought it's a good time to relocate my hobby to the basement...which is only about 4 ft below grade and from the concrete floor to bottom of floor joists just under 6'8". It is very dry and I have framed out an area directly underneath my current gun/reloading room. Over all the floor plan is about the same but with 1.5ft less of ceiling height. However having no garage, this is the area where I had previously had a 7ft bench and some metal shelving for tools. The area will have bench on each side of the room with about 6ft of floor space between the 2 benches. I have plenty of new outlets already set up and on their own breakers and plan to drywall soon.

To condense space I plan on having a 18"wide by 22" deep floor -to-ceiling shelf on each side of the reloading and build about a 6' bench with shelves underneath for bigger items. The bench will be 22" deep. On the other side I will have a 8' x 30" deep bench for my drill press,and vise, grinder and the majority of my power tools and building related equipment under that bench and maybe a wall shelf or two . The miter saw will be on the bench but I don't plan on doing any cutting down there. The bow window area will about 30" deep and I plan to do a sort of built-in style shelf going up to the window and that will square out my floor. I have 3 switches to control lighting on each side and in the middle. I was planning on doing recessed lights 3 on each side and 2 above the built in shelf, and a center light in the room. I like to think that I won't be here forever so I'd like to have it that the next owner can have a nice finished room as an extra bedroom or at least a small TV room/play room so I am not trying to go full on work area.

My $10000 question is what do I do about lighting?
I like the "buy more than I need and return what I don't use" mentality so I've bought a 6 pack of Halo 6" LED lights that have a 975 lumen brightness and mount directly to one of the round boxes typical of light fixtures, I've also bought a 4 pack of home Depot brand recessed led lights that have no housing and just have springs that hold the light firm against drywall after slipping the connectors and box in the hole to just sit on top of the drywall. What I like about these is that you can change the warmth from daylight, bright white and warm light with a little switch that connects the light to the mini housing. Lastly.I bought a 4ft section of led shop light that has a 4k lumen rating and figured maybe use this over the work bench.

By having a flat white ceiling and most likely flat white walls (unless i paint them gray...left over from an apartment job) should I be concerned about having enough light with what I proposed? I know it's a relatively small space but I always want it to be as bright as possible without shadows when reloading or working on guns. Anyone have good/bad results with recessed lighting in a reloading room? Keep in mind that I will most likely have 6.5' of height so I am worried I will have too much concentration of light from the recessed lighting...if so, should I just return them and get all led strips (like florescent but much lower profile)?

I will clean up the area in a bit and get some pictures. I plan on insulating all around too so maybe that will help get a better idea of light output.
 
Last edited:
Keep the walls and ceiling white, and where possible, direct lights towards the ceiling to get an evenly, well lit effect.

With LED's, be cognicent of the colour temperature - "cool" LED's will have a blue tint, while "warm" lights will look orange. If you only have cool lights, then your eyes will perceive it as less bright than what they really are. I tend to mix cool and warm LEDs for a more "natural" looking lite.
 
“I will clean up the area in a bit and get some pictures. I plan on insulting all around too so maybe that will help get a better idea of light output.”

I’d say you haven’t insulted anyone yet and I won’t start here. I think you meant insulate?
By many’s standards that is a small space. My one word of advise would be to avoid fluorescent lights like the plague. They can cause your electronic scales and things like that to give you false readings.
 
“I will clean up the area in a bit and get some pictures. I plan on insulting all around too so maybe that will help get a better idea of light output.”

I’d say you haven’t insulted anyone yet and I won’t start here. I think you meant insulate?
By many’s standards that is a small space. My one word of advise would be to avoid fluorescent lights like the plague. They can cause your electronic scales and things like that to give you false readings.

Corrected haha. Thank you for that. There were a few grammatical errors I updated so it would help everyone understand.

I also don't use an electronic scale currently but it is food for thought.

Thank you piie for your recommendation
 
I am glad that you are addressing lighting first in your new room. Lighting is too often not given the attention that it deserves, resulting in a less than enjoyable work place or having to do add ons later. Often these adjustments are less than perfect and a compromise at best.

I have designed several production facilities and I start off by drawing out the room dimensions on paper, then create scaled paper images of the furniture/work spaces to see how they all fit, including personnel. Once I am sure all processes are captured, work around area allows for movement and such then I start to layout lighting. First general then start focusing down to the specific tasks and special lighting requirements. It is easy to picture when you see it on paper including where you will be in the picture.

Is this space going to be a single use type space or as CaptainMal pointed out, your get away room for Reloading, TV and Computer time. If the latter, then I would recommend that you work on the area layout first. What tasks will be done where.

For detailed work, you need task lighting, in my opinion this should be two fold, first is the flood light for this area and secondly there should be adjustable/directable lighting for that precision work.

For general work areas, you need good flood lighting with concentrated light onto your work areas. The light should be overhead to slightly behind your head to prevent eye strain and light the surface without glare.

For computer or tv area, less light is desirable to prevent glare on the screens and ease eye strain.
There are a lot of really good websites which can give you more detailed ideas about designing the lighting systems for a room. Just Google "designing light for a multiple use work space". You will be surprised at what you can find.

I hope that this helps.
 
@Papa Charlie , though I am leaving my "everything" space/man cave the computer and tv are going to be left behind. If I am in this new room it will either be reloading or working on a gun or doing typical work bench stuff. Pictures will be uploaded soon and should only help in getting my point across. Room footprint is 11' wide and 8' long (usable work space without bench) and being that both benches would be out 24 and 30 inches without shelves I planned on putting recessed lights about 24 inches off the walls and spacing about 30" apart. There would also be 2 recessed lights above my built in shelf on the outside bow window. Last I planned on having 1 fixture in the center of the room utilizing traditional 60 equivalent bulbs to help flood
 
Current reloading room/ gun room/ office soon to be play room/office. Don't mind the mess
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20200202_104049805_HDR-1024x768.jpg
    IMG_20200202_104049805_HDR-1024x768.jpg
    220.5 KB · Views: 439
  • IMG_20200202_104112789-1024x768.jpg
    IMG_20200202_104112789-1024x768.jpg
    213 KB · Views: 417
Pictures of framed out space. Picture with vice is the reloading side. Picture with grinder/ old bench with be for other work bench.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20200202_111659332-1024x768.jpg
    IMG_20200202_111659332-1024x768.jpg
    168.7 KB · Views: 386
  • IMG_20200202_111725628-1024x768.jpg
    IMG_20200202_111725628-1024x768.jpg
    210.7 KB · Views: 423
  • IMG_20200202_111706279-1024x768.jpg
    IMG_20200202_111706279-1024x768.jpg
    192.1 KB · Views: 360
I use many 100W equivalent LED lights. I use a dehumidifier in the spring when the air nor heat is on much.
Build a bigger reloading table than you think you'll need. And build a bullet shelf the same way.
Organization is very important.
20170404_170139.jpg 20191220_182759.jpg
 
For me, white walls would be too bright. Thinking sore eyes as they would never get a rest. I have 4' LED lights above the benches and tan walls. Its like a lighthouse inside so I can see what I am doing, but the mellow tone walls make it so the room is not intense.
 
Thanks all for the insights. I would just like to ask specifically about lighting and whether I should use the recessed lights/ led bars/ or conventional light fixtures.

@jonbearman Excellent point on vapor barrier. I am going to insulate on craft backed r-13 plus a plastic vapor barrier on walls and ceilings...my wife is very keep to smells and I sprayed some pb blaster in the same room to free up wheels on an ancient floor safe and she complained about it days plus had me leave the window open in the bedroom at night.
 
I would do recessed (can) lighting unless you are looking to stack them tight. You will want a widest throw over the bench that you can get.
 
I would do recessed (can) lighting unless you are looking to stack them tight. You will want a widest throw over the bench that you can get.
I have recessed lights also. You'll want a standing light also, so you can have extra light if/ when you need it.

I'd stress install more recessed fixtures than you think you'll need, maybe on two or three different switches. It comes in handy!

I personally find more light better than low light. Especially in a basement.
 

Upgrades & Donations

This Forum's expenses are primarily paid by member contributions. You can upgrade your Forum membership in seconds. Gold and Silver members get unlimited FREE classifieds for one year. Gold members can upload custom avatars.


Click Upgrade Membership Button ABOVE to get Gold or Silver Status.

You can also donate any amount, large or small, with the button below. Include your Forum Name in the PayPal Notes field.


To DONATE by CHECK, or make a recurring donation, CLICK HERE to learn how.

Forum statistics

Threads
165,564
Messages
2,198,363
Members
78,961
Latest member
Nicklm
Back
Top