I'm going to revive this thread, but I don't know how much of what has already been said is going to be relevant. My dad's going to want to do more work again soon, so I wanted to mock up a plan of the layout. Thankfully, one of my former coworker's friends just got her Bachelor of Architecture degree, and, unable to find work in her field so far, she's now working in our department, and she was hungry for a project in which she could employ some of her knowledge. I suggested I may need her services in order to draw up the layout of my basement so I could share with you guys and get your feedback. She came over tonight and made a really fast, not-to-scale drawing of the basic layout with the measurements, then made a model in Google SketchUp Pro with the anticipated layout (which she'll refine after some more time, but I thought I'd jump the gun to give you all an idea of what my space might turn out to look like). I can't give you the current layout at the moment, but I'll post the few pictures of the SketchUp model that she emailed me, and I'll describe what I can of what's different from the current layout.



Currently, there's actually a wall where it shows the beam over the couch, and that beam actually runs full across the basement, supported by probably three beams. There are two in the wall that we're planning on knocking down, and she's going to calculate whether or not the beam that currently exists where we'd like the seating to be can be moved to the extreme right before the ledge around the perimeter. Her estimation is that it should be feasible, which would certainly be nice. Otherwise, I may not be able to get away with two rows of seating, since a beam could interfere with the people in the rear seating.

The bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette area are not currently divided like that. The bedroom is actually even tinier right now, since there's another stairwell coming down the right side of that space, which the one in the mock-up replaces. The bedroom also does not open directly into the bathroom like that. There's empty space between the two.

She was thinking the heavy curtain idea would be best for blocking the stairwell entrance during movie watching.





Hopefully this gives you enough of an idea of my current plan so you can tear it apart.