Building new reloading room in basement: Update 2/23

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.

 

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.

 

You can't have too much light in a basement.

 

“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

 

Keep it warm and keep it bright. Make your place a fun place to be and a place to kind of get away from the realities of your increasing family life. I have computer, TV, radio , files, pictures and lots of reloading and hunting supplies in my reloading room. It is a good place to be. Make your place like that.

IMG_7199 by Larry Malinoski, on Flickr

 

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.

 

A de-humidifier would be a good item to have.

 

@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

 

Basement is dry as a bone and new windows would be going in too. I really don't think I need one but figured I'd get one just in case

 

Current reloading room/ gun room/ office soon to be play room/office. Don't mind the mess

 

Pictures of framed out space. Picture with vice is the reloading side. Picture with grinder/ old bench with be for other work bench.

 

I would put in a vapor barrier and use blue board for sure.

 

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.

 

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 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.

 

FWIW, when I decided to use my basement for reloading I thought I would only use a portion of it...my ENTIRE basement is now dedicated to reloading/cleaning/ tooling.

 

Go with LED lights you won't regret it. Changed all mine in the basement, look 1000 % better! Oh and get daylight and not blue color.

Joe Sal