So we came to an abrupt halt on the riser (does anything in this project go 100% the first time? Don't answer that!)...

I did get the basic part of the riser built. Pretty much everything short of putting the two layers of 3/4" plywood on top. We put it into position, and then I realized that I added width for the seats (no "exact" fit for safety reasons) and even more so when I account for the 1.5" recommended (rounded over) overhang, the walking path around the riser to get to the movies and equipment would force people to navigate around where the side QS8s would go.. Crap. I will probably have to tear part of the riser apart and make it narrower, but in the mean time I decided to get all of the can lights and wall sconces wired up. The problem, yes another one, was that I tried to trim off the excess mud/paint from around the can light locations, that pretty much all of them ended up with visible gypsum (white) against the painted surrounding (Chocolate Truffle brown). Even the can light "rings" didn't cover them, so I needed to go back, patch them with some mud, and paint. So while they work, they won't be "done" until tomorrow when the paint dries and I can put the rings up.

I also had a field day with the sconces, but that was somewhat expected. The boxes for the wall sconces mounted mid-stud cavity, so they were held between two studs by an expandable metal rod that the came with. This would have been perfect for a single layer of drywall, but with 2 layers of 5/8", they were recessed quite a bit. I knew that this would probably be a problem, but wasn't originally planning on doing lights, so I was ill-prepared. I ended up digging in the garage for about 30 minutes to find some of my old workshop stuff (still never unpacked it since EVERYTHING is in our garage waiting for the basement to be done). Anyway, I found some thick plastic washers that I picked up about 13 YEARS ago when I was building a "swinging/swaying" bridge for my daughter's playhouse. She was 5 at the time, and graduates high school in May. Anyway, a couple of those were perfect and the lights are on solid.

But then, in the excitement, I forgot that I needed to caulk the sconce boxes to the drywall. Urg. That will be tomorrow because we didn't have the small lights for more than 1 of them. Again, I wasn't planning on doing lights today.

I will get them caulked, back up, and the lights in them tomorrow, but that and the can light stuff mentioned above will be about it as we have some stuff going on tomorrow night.

So the other delay was that I needed to wire things for bass shakers, or at least get two sets of wires from the equipment rack to the riser. When the design was going to be pretty much a short riser for the whole back end of the theater with a taller section for the chairs (sort of an island for the chairs with a step level all the way around), it would have been easy to hide the wires. We changed the design to just have the riser "island" since tall people would have been ducking as they walked around under the sconces. So the concrete floor has a cut in it that is somewhat deep. I originally had this filled with caulk. I had to cut it out which was easy since it was a hard caulk. I then had to try to cut out the super flexible acoustical caulk from under the wall edge to make a path for the wires to go along the edge of the walls and then into the "canyon" like cut into the concrete and then pop up under the riser. It should work just fine, but I need to caulk them into place yet, BUT I still don't know how carpeting is going to work. Will it be better to carpet the whole room, and then carpet the riser separate, or secure the riser to the floor and carpet around/over it? The first option is probably the more long-term versatile, but then it creates some coordination complexity:

1) carpet the home theater first
2) Cut a small hole into the carpet to route the bass shaker wires through.
3) When they start working on the rest of the basement, I scramble to get the riser back into the room using some yet to be bought/constructed dolly system to wheel it in on-end.
4) Measure and position the riser.
5) Glue and screw the first layer of plywood (pre-cut, routered, and labeled.
6) Add a layer of 30 pound roofing paper.
7) Screw down the top layer of playwood (again, pre-cut, routered, and labeled.)

This is of course assuming that they are willing/able to do a decent job. If it was just a square box it would be easy, but I don't know how they wrap a side and back of a step (inside corner) so that it looks OK.

I'll try to snap some pictures tomorrow night, but at the same time, I might wait until Tuesday when I get 2 chairs down there to test out some sight lines, and everything else is pretty much cleaned up.

Still LOTS to do throughout the basement.

Farewell - June 4, 2020