These are the listing photos.  The current owner will be taking it with.
Not certain where they got it.

Work shop reloading room etc...  not a sit on my ass and watch tv room

When I was a draftsman and estimator, granite frequently ran in the $70-$100SF range, installed.  Figure about $400 for a nice undermount sink, $150 for the cut-out (and polishing), and probably $40-50 per linear foot for an upgraded bullnose or similar edge.

A full kitchen reno would be around $25,000 as a guess since you could pretty easily replace all the cabinetry.  If it were my kitchen, I'd change the large pantry cabinet to uppers and lowers and run new counters all the way out.  Dark cabinetry would look good with a quartz counter like Silestone, and perhaps a decorative undermount sink made of copper or something.

It's easy to come up with really nice looking ideas in your head, and then seeing the estimate will make you go

I know someone in town who makes them out of pallets

The lady who owned our house in WA before we bought it spent $90K just on the kitchen. It's amazingly easy to do...high end kitchens can run way up from there. We walked in (I cook a lot), my wife and I looked at each other, and we told the realtor, "We'll take it." Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

You don't need to go there, that $25K to $30K would probably be the sweet spot for ROI in your house. Do your homework on design (pros are expensive, but invaluable - and you have to be able to tell them what you don't like about their design), then be damn careful and do a LOT of research on potential contractors. You want to see their work and talk to the people they've done work for...if they're at all hesitant to point you to former clients move on.

Dark cabinets with what color counter?  Dark, or more towards tan?
How would that look with the hardwood floor being such a light color?

Thanks for the info!

Especially one with decorative pillows and throws.

A lot of the pics look nice, but come on.

Heres what I would do, because I brew...

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25593

A lot of people seem to contrast a bit on the cabinets/counters for the color, light cabs dark counters or vise-versa. With how open and light the house looks in the pictures you would have more flexibility to do what you would like to compared to most houses.

You just want to avoid too much of one thing....all dark turns into a dungeon and all lights seems washed out.

I say this as a Quartz fabricator, not a designer, so only FWIW. I have seen every design style and some are really good and others are not so well thought out.

I do talk to a lot of designers/architects who recommend staying pretty streamlined if you are planning on doing this once and staying in the house. Lots of bright and trendy colors may look awesome right now, but if you're living in the house in 15 years it could turn into the mauve of the future.

Also another consideration for the basement ceiling, instead of painting it black I did a bar area for a guy a few months back who did a real rich brown color for the ceiling instead of black. I thought really looked nice with the theme of his basement and he claimed it hid dust/etc really well.

Ignore the haters OP, that is a beautiful house and you have a lot of potential for your cave!  Have you though about something like this for the walls?


It would look nice or maybe this?

You mean,you don't know if the wife will let you spend that much.
Stop with the Man Cave,it's really a ridiculous word

I finished my basement

hired the sheetrock done, best $2500 I ever spent in my life.  did everything else myself, it's no big deal.

I basically cut the basement into four rooms:  an office, a workshop (where the furnace and hot water are), a TV room, and arcade.   A weird area next to the stairs was made into two separate walk-in closets.

Try to make the rooms as rectangular as possible.

enclose the HVAC in soffets, run the soffet the full length of the room

Put the sump pump inside a closet.

use 2" foam board insulation instead of the usual batt and vapor barrier insulation.  unless you're a big fan of mold

don't finish your basement until your basement is BONE DRY.  fix those water problems first.   mold is a horrible health hazard


My arcade has a mixture of classic 80s arcade games like Ms. Pac and high end 1990s bally Williams collector pinballs like Twilight Zone.

Me & my wife were big quarter arcade fans back in the 80s.  I mean the golden age of 1978 to 1985.



I don't like this "man-cave" bullshit

"my wife gave me permission to make a man-cave"

WTF???

something is wrong with this country

I've been working since I was 15 years old but I have to get permission from my wife to put a bar and a pool table in the basement??

fuck that

Nice looking place, very similar to ours.  Ranch on a basement is awesome.

Our basement has a finished office, gun work room, unfinished storage with lots of shelving and an extra garage area that I use for woodworking.

Mancave gets turned into a MIL guest room. You get the man closet or corner next to the laundry room. A year later it's the mancave/garage. Women have a way of claiming territory like the white man did the Indians. Welcome to your own personal Oklahoma.

Yep.......nice house tho, girly man.

exactly

by the time the average man has been married for 20 years, his domain is a workbench in the basement

Only hope OP is to make your mancave asap and go beyond furniture. You need to make it as female unfriendly as possible.  Here's my suggestion. Attached File
Attached File

Hopefully you told them the American Flag art in the living room goes with the house. That should be the first thing out in the man cave!

I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Try to grab some samples of counter and cabinet colors.  Take your initial ideas of 'colors' and grab a few samples and bring them home.  Lowes is great for offering stone samples from their kitchen dept.  I was thinking about a Silestone countertop and picked 2 colors.  The one that looked better than the other one at Lowes didn't look as good once I came home.  The other sample was absolutely perfect for the kitchen.

When I saw pictures of your kitchen, I could tell it was functional, but the color of the cabinetry just doesn't look right to me.  Sometimes a little paint needs to be brought into the scope of work as well.  It looks like you have maple floors, so my initial recommendation would be to go with maple cabinetry or something dark.  A counter with a lighter tone would be a great step forward from there.  

As I stroll through the pictures on page 1, I also thought of recommending tile work that resembles the stone work on the front corners of your garage.  Another observation is that I really like the white trim on your windows and that would look really good on your kitchen window behind the sink.  I think the dining area to the right of your pantry cabinet needs matching paint to the rest of the house but that's just a quick observation.

I would also look for a door panel for your cabinetry that resembles your garage doors.  They look nice and bringing that design cue inside would be one of my suggestions.

Also, from a distance, I like the style of faucet you have on your kitchen sink.  A nice undermount sink would look really good with it during your countertop replacement if you chose that direction.

"Mancave"

"Wife unit"

"Gave me permission"

Also OP I know where you live now. It's generally not a good idea to post images that can be quickly indexed back to their Edina Realty listing 

- work bench / working area.

- bar / tv area

- gun room

- archery range

Nice.

Your ego is writing checks, your body can't cash...

Football fan?  Gotta put some astro turf in there somewhere.  Either the floor, or along a wall would be interesting.



When you have room to work, and you want to do it right, it's the details that will truly immerse yourself into a true man cave experience.  When you sit down to watch a game, you're going to want to feel like you're at the stadium, right?



Along the top-and-sides of the walls, you can put banks of LEDs in a square formation to simulate stadium lighting.  LEDs because they won't use much energy, and can be dimmed for atmospheric effect rather than blow you out with too much light.

Proud for you OP.
Suggestions:
Gun Safe/Vault
Animals and fish on the walls
Giant TV / entertainment center
Animal skins on floor
Soft chairs

That will be the first stage when I get mine. Already have permission

PERSEC mate..

Projector screens do not perform as well in rooms that don't have total light control, meaning you have the ability to make it pitch black. The screen material is usually designed to amplify light to an extent. This works great for a projected image but not so great when there is ambient light in the room along with it, and it can really wash out the image as a result. Even the light emitted from the various displays on your AV gear can be enough to wash out an image if you don't put them in a cabinet or behind a door or something. I did a lot of motorized projection screens with a flatscreen on the wall behind it so you could choose what to watch on depending on lights on or off. Just something to consider. If you need any other advice on the Av side of things feel free to PM me, I spent 12 years in the high end custom low voltage industry which was everything from lighting control to automation and AV.

You need a library.  Books about World War II and the 9/11 attack,  coffee table books on the Bismarck wreck and flintlocks. shelf decorations like the flag raising at Iwo Jima knickknack and an antique bayonet, you get the idea.

Go on Ebay and find an old newspaper from your home state with an important historical headline and have it framed.  Like this...

Any new ideas?

Jesus...I have failed at life.