My Underground Batcave Garage is Almost DONE!

Today, my bat cave garage is getting a massive renovation. Now, I first bought this piece of land in 2019. We're sitting on 1.7 acres here in the state of Utah. Now, when I first decided to build my dream house, there were so many different ideas, so many different concepts, and so many different renders. I took so much inspiration online, seeing all these different ways you could go about it, and we landed on a final concept, a main floor garage, same footprint below it, a bat cave garage, an underground garage with a car elevator. Now, construction on my dream house officially started in spring of 2020, and 2020 was an interesting year for everything, and especially construction. This is the bat cave, the underground car garage. We should be able to put eight cars underground. We're getting ready to crane in the steel next week. But seeing my dream come into reality was such a fun process, having this idea on paper, and then turning it into a reality. Roof is starting to go up in this main garage. We have the office gonna be in the corner right there, and then the car elevator that's gonna drop down to the bat cave. Very, very cool perspective right there. So car elevator drops to the bat cave. Now, steel prices, lumber prices, paint prices, basically everything was about double what it was prior to the pandemic. So unfortunately, the budget on the dream house kinda got out of control. So fast forward to 2022, we finally moved into the house, but because of the pandemic and the price of raw materials, I never had the resources to finish the underground, the bat cave or the basement. So in January of this year, I sold my beloved Lamborghini Countach, the triple white 5,000 QV. We've taken that money to finish the house. Now, construction's been underway for about a month and a half. Let's head on downstairs and let's check it out. Now, we're gonna start on this side first. This is the basement side. I like to describe the shape of my house as a donut and the driver goes down the middle. So from the basement, you can actually go to the bat cave garage. We just gotta zip this up and into the basement, which has changed ever so dramatically. Sophie, this is your side right here. I'm so excited to decorate. I bet you are. We got a lot to do before decoration, but this room right here, should we start on this side? Your favorite room? So the bat cave is kinda sort of my room. I get to make all the decisions. And then this room, Sophia gets to make all of the decisions. Sophia loves her interior design. So what is this room? A bunk room. Yeah, that's never gonna get used. I see one, two, three, four, five. I see six beds. We have four bedrooms upstairs as well. This is exactly what we needed down here. However, I agree long-term, it makes sense. It'd be very cool. Very, very cool. Now, unfortunately for Sophia right now, this is probably the least completed room in the entire basement or bat cave. They haven't done any of the drywall in here. I mean, you can see all the drywall materials right here. They're gonna be hanging that probably on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Drywall makes such a difference. The last time you guys were down here, none of this existed. We now have completed rooms. So this is gonna be obviously the bathroom here. We have another bedroom there. And this is the mother-in-law suite of sorts. I think that would be how you'd describe it in the interior design, in the construction, the architecture world. One thing I love about this room is all the different dynamics, all the geometry, all the angles. The room's got a lot of character. This section over here is gonna be a three-quarter kitchen. Is that a term? I've never heard it, but it makes sense. It sounds good, right? It makes sense. So it's gonna have everything except for a stove top or an oven, oven or stove top, right? It's gonna have a refrigerator, dishwasher, a sink, microwave, et cetera, et cetera. It's gonna be kind of against that back corner. It's gonna 90 right there. But in this room, Sophia, if you could be so inclined, there's no electricity in here quite yet. So it's a little bit dark. This is just a car parts storage room. So all the event store parts that are upstairs, we're gonna have a bunch of shelving in here and kind of maybe organize it like a little bit better. I mean, I don't hate it upstairs, but Sophia's not like- I'm not a fan. She's not the biggest fan, which I don't fully understand. From the storage room, it's kind of a secret vault room because if people walked in here and saw the storage, they wouldn't expect this. We still need, obviously, drywall in here as well. Oh, the sound is amazing in here. And not a lot to say right now, but more to come pretty soon. Well, we're saving the coolest room for last downstairs, but in through here, this is kind of our storage closet, if you will. Now we closed off all of the equipment. So you have like hot water heater, you have a water softener or a furnace, you have our ECU for lack of a better term. And once again, more car parts storage throughout back here. Tires, we should put the tire- How do we get them down here? I'm gonna hide it all in here. You're gonna hide it all? Okay, what are you trying to say? You got too much going on up there. If anybody needs any tires, I got every section, every size you could ever imagine or need or desire. And entering probably the coolest room in the entire place. So in the future, mini fridge here, cotton candy machine here. Sophia don't like it, but man, do I love that cotton candy. We're gonna get so fat. I know, I will already. Tubby, blubby. Muffin top nation is back. So this of course is the movie theater. We got some temporary lighting right now. So in the future, obviously we're gonna have a projector. The screen's gonna be right here. You got your different levels. So this view from right here, this is gonna be sick, Soph. This is gonna be crazy. Obviously this room, it's a little bit echoey. Hello! And that is with a lot of installation right there. We gotta get some major sound deadening panels, some type of noise reduction system. I don't know exactly. All the design majors are gonna notice the coffered ceiling. Very cool design touch. We're actually gonna have some low voltage lighting that's gonna sit right on that edge. All the finish work is gonna cover it. It's gonna create like this cool halo effect. And then we're gonna have other like low voltage on every single step. And then the little hallway that Oscar's sitting on, we're gonna have more low voltage. The lighting in here is gonna be sick. And that is cool. The lighting in here is amazing. But ladies and gentlemen, we are about to enter the bat cave. Now it's very, very dark right now. So we gotta walk in. We gotta turn on a couple lights. So watch your step because it's echoey. I don't wanna show you guys too much of what is going on right now. So we got this little storage closet. We're gonna turn on this light right here. So all these light switches up here, this is gonna turn on all the bat cave lights. So Sophia is our light engineer, our light technician. Very important job. So at any given moment, Soph, let's see it. Turn on the lights. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bat cave. This has been such a long time in the making. Finally, finally, finally, let there be light. It's so bright, which is exactly what we wanted. Obviously, once again, the echo. Hello! We gotta sort that out. But once all the cars are down here, I promise because upstairs, I think the ceilings are so vaulted. And even when the cars are in the way, it doesn't do enough. But when there's like eight to 10 cars in here, it is gonna be crazy. So these light fixtures turned out amazing. You can actually see how they sit completely flush with the bottom of the ceiling. Over the course of the last couple of years, I've always realized that lighting is actually the most important part, basically when it comes to any kind of design. And these lights turned out amazing. But for the hallway, obviously it's dark right now. You can see all these little channels here. Sophia's gonna brighten it up a little bit. So we're actually gonna have low voltage lighting sit right in all these different channels. And you can kind of see the design. It'll be much easier once it's actually illuminated. You can see you got the 90 degrees up there on the ceiling. It is gonna look so cool when there is lighting in every single one of these. So you can imagine in the future. So you're watching a movie and then you wanna go check out the cars. And there's gonna be kind of, I'm not gonna say a hidden door because that's probably sounds cooler than it's actually gonna be. There's gonna be like a pocket door here. And then when you walk in, just imagine, oh my. So you look amazing right now. This is crazy. You look so cool. This is what it's gonna be like. But imagine when all the walls are painted white, the flooring is done as well, and you have cars just everywhere. That is gonna be crazy. And then we have more low voltage lighting right here. You can see the channels that wrap up along the beam all the way down to that back end. If you're a shadow expert, you're gonna notice we got a lot of shadows here right now. And we're gonna sort that out here momentarily. So this section, I kind of tried to explain it a couple of videos ago. This is gonna have probably the coolest effect of the entire garage. And there's gonna be a ton of finish work. So imagine the ceiling is a bunch of slats, a bunch of slotted panels, basically that run all the way down the ceiling, down the wall, and then integrated in, completely flushed with the same kind of channels, a bunch of low voltage lighting that once again, waterfalls down the back wall. I'm so excited. It's gonna be so cool. So next steps, obviously down here, you can see they're doing all the mudding, the sanding, et cetera, et cetera, taping. Obviously the walls have to get painted. We're gonna go bright white. The goal is to obviously make this as bright as possible. The flooring, we kind of went back and forth. I thought about doing white epoxy like I did upstairs. And then Sophia suggested. I suggested? Well, yeah, I'm giving you credit. You're giving me credit. Just polished concrete. Super clean. White is super hard to keep clean, but silver, if we want silver, great. It's not that bad. The nice thing about the polished concrete, we can always change that at any given moment. We wanted to do white tile floors, but it's very, mucho dinero. Cuesta mucho, muchisimo. Keep talking in Spanish. No, let's hear that. What? I really wanted to bring your car down here so I could showcase these lights, but unfortunately we got a handful of issues. And it all stems right here. So you got the car elevator that brings the cars down. And if you look closely, you'll see there are items just like this screw that are just kind of sort of everywhere. And the problem with this screw, almost this exact screw, is that one of these is in the tire of the Koenigsegg. Yep, I brought the Koenigsegg. I parked it right here. I'll put a photo here so you guys can see it. Then we can go upstairs and you can actually see the screw in the tire. So before we bring the cars down here, we really got to get the garage like maybe a little closer to the finish line. So Sophia and I are debating right now because we realized the screws in the Koenigsegg might not be exactly the same, but a screw is a screw. It's the same concept. Sophia and I are betting. I think it's a screw in the tire of the Koenigsegg. Sophia thinks it's a nail. What are we betting though? Of course, upstairs we have the white epoxy, which does look amazing. The problem is keeping it clean. You'll notice right here, it is, yeah, it kind of shows all the dirt. Whereas I feel like polished concrete would hide it a lot more. Basically anytime, especially in the winter time, you drive any car in here that has any kind of water on it or snow and then it melts, it just leaves so much dirt. But that's not what we care about. What we care about, is it a screw or is it a nail? You're buying me Swig? Is that what I heard? That was pretty sick of you. You look, Soph. You do the looking. You let me know. Always doubting me. It's silver. It's a silver screw. Unfortunately, this is why we're not taking a car down to the Batcave right now. It's a little bright, but you can see that is one screw and one tire, ladies and gentlemen, on a Koenigsegg with a carbon wheel. So yeah. You gotta reverse, bud. No, you gotta reverse. Come on. You can reverse. Come on. Put it into reverse. Come on, Terry, put it into reverse. No? You gotta flip the hoof? Now, before we end off today's video, I do want to point out that the backyard is still a disaster and the backyard renovation is coming kind of sort of soon, someday. The problem with these home projects, they're so expensive. The Batcave and the basement, so the Batcave, to finish that off, 250,000. The basement, 200,000. So 450,000 just to finish an unfinished basement. So the backyard is gonna be so incredibly expensive. Eventually, someday, a detached garage where I can work on cars, some kind of sports court, some kind of pool, possibly, a lot of grass for Oscar to run, and eventually, a go-kart track. Coming soon, but not like that soon. I know a lot of you guys are probably shocked when I say 250,000 for the Batcave and $200,000 for the basement. The main item is the lighting. I'm spending a fortune on lighting because rather than do just can lights and then eventually want to tear it out, I'm trying to do it right the first time. A lot of the things I did on the main house, if I could go back in time, I would've spent a little bit more money here, a little bit less here, a little bit more there. So I'm really trying to get the Batcave perfect the first time, and the lighting down there has gotta be perfect. So that's a big part of the budget. Obviously, down in the basement, the movie theater, there's a lot of equipment down there, audio, visual, et cetera, et cetera. It is a ton of money, and that's just kind of how it is post-pandemic. I want to say construction prices since the pandemic are still up about 40 to 50%. And one last item, the IndyCar on the wall in the living room, where is the update? Some of you guys know I have an IndyCar. I spent a lot of money to buy that thing, and the intention is to put it on the wall inside the living room of my house. Now, when the house was built, I was under the understanding that the wall was built to support that. And unbeknownst to me, that didn't happen. During the entire construction of this house, I would come over here, I would talk to my contractors, the wall was being built to support that. I had a structure engineer come over to the house, look at the wall, and that wall is not supporting a car, unfortunately. Now, there are ways to go about that. We could fix the wall, we could add more steel, more structural supports. That's gonna cost a lot of money. We're gonna have to rip out basically the entire wall, and basically my living room would be a disaster for a couple weeks, a couple months. So the other option, I got the IndyCar. I'm gonna build a detached garage someday in the backyard. I could do steel construction. The garage could be built to support the IndyCar. I could have the IndyCar on the wall of the detached garage, which might be a better option, maybe a smarter option. I think in the living room is much cooler. I don't know if it's worth it. We're talking like 40, 50 grand to put the IndyCar on the wall. 40 to 50 grand to put a car on a wall is ridiculous. Like, it's a complete waste of money. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I think the detached garage probably makes more sense. Someday, if I was trying to sell the house to you, I could understand an IndyCar on the wall in the living room might not be the coolest selling point, whereas in the detached garage, I think the average car guy would think that's pretty cool. So let me know what you guys think. Should we put the IndyCar in the detached garage, or do we spend an absurd amount of money, tear out the wall, and do what we didn't do right the first time? Let me know what you guys think in the comments below. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. Kind of a shorter video, kind of a house-focused video. A12 update coming in the next video, a very fun update. But on that bombshell, today's video is over. We'll see you guys in the next video.