My basement is dedicated to the things I love.

I have a wine cellar that's supposed to be the fourth bathroom down there. It's been converted to have no furnace air to heat it up, and also the concrete floor is painted with "shop paint". The foundation is on three sides, so the temperature is constant. There is the laundry room that is at the bottom of the steps, and the rest is mine. Hehe.....

My "Man Cave" is off to one side, and is decorated with big baseboards and casings (all flat stock; 1/2" for base, and 3/4" for case. Crown mouldings are set 3" below ceiling height and have rope lighting tucked behind them. Control is from a dimmer switch beside the regular lighting controls (on a dimmer as well).

The colour of the walls is a "manly" shade of mustard-beige. Neutral is the key. The room is 13'x21' and rectangular.

I have adorned the walls with railroad related pictures that I have taken, and blown up to various larger sizes. The "punch" of the random pictures is that they were converted to black&white with a sepia tone. All the frames are black to add to the all-black furniture down there. Using or converting to B&W allows me to use sometimes questionable quality photos when stretched to the larger sizes.

Because I love hockey, and watch games down there, I have some hockey pictures placed randomly in the mix. They mostly are of great moments of the games. My fav is Vancouver Canucks a la 1994 finals (game 6), where Trevor Linden is celebrating his goalie's (Kirk Maclean) efforts after the game. You can tell that both are exhausted from the way they look. Trev's got blood all over the front of his white jersey from a cut to his face in the game.

Carpet is a dark brown/black/honey checkerboard berber. A very indestructable carpet, and hides stains very well. I guess something like it was used in a parlour car or tasteful casino at one time.

I also have a model railroad (N-scale) taking another room the same size beside it.

Hope this helps your efforts in creating a room to your taste. Just fill it with the stuff you like, and invite the wife or girlfriend to visit once in a while.

almo