Well, this morning I wrote a long and comprehensive response to Daox's last post. Unfortunately I clicked on submit right when the forum was down and I don't have the gumption to re write it at this time. I'll tackle it later. The moral was that DIY sheetrock finishing is a bad idea. Save up a little longer and hire someone else to do it. You'll spend a little but more but it's certainly worth it!
@raydias, I am certainly NOT going to rock the ceiling OR insulate it. I am going to put some tasteful, light colored wood paneling up on the ceiling. I always talk about never finishing sheet rock again but for several years now I have been pretty firm on the FACT that I will never finish a sheetrock ceiling again….EVER. What would insulating it do? Keep the heat out and the basement would be colder. I am fortunate in that this house has loads of baseboards so I can run the water at a reduced temperature. Especially after I outsulate the walls above grade. I'm aiming to tear out the fiberglass, dense pack the whole thing from the outside and add R- 32 on top of that with polyiso, topping it off with a rain screen, ship lap and oil based paint. Once that's done the majority of my fuel will go to heating water for showers and the like. I'm going to rely on the HRV duct work to circulate the miniscule amount of heat the basement needs from the main floor. There is a great case study done by BSV where they retrofit three houses. In one of them the owner wanted to save a few G's so he skipped insulating the basement. They tried to remove the basement from the conditioned area. And it didn't work. Plain and simple. The Building Science Corp. couldn't even do it. So my rule of thing regarding ceiling insulation is, don't do it at all unless you are, 1. Putting it above your head in an attic, or, 2. Putting unfaced batts in to deaden sound, which I will be doing in the bedroom seen. My daughter will be moving in there and it's right above my movie theater (AKA living room during the day).
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