Finally have some time to create a thread on my basement game room. I enjoy seeing these threads and would like to document my progress, and possibly help someone else out looking to do the same.

Hoping for completion towards the end of this year. It has been a slow going project. I'm trying to do all this mostly by myself.

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Chapter 1: Basement Waterproofing (DYI Cost ~$2.5k, Pro Cost ~$30-40k)

I chose to waterproof the basement from the outside. I started summer 2017. I used two products on the exterior walls to waterproof it. Henry blueskin WP200, and Delta MS.

1st Step was to excavate down to the basement footer with a mini CAT excavator. I have a buddy that did an awesome job running the machine for me. His pay was beer and food.
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Removed 2 pine trees while we were at it. These were the neighbors planted right on our property line.
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My house was built in 1964 so the footer wasn't your traditional footer you get nowadays. Back then they did something called a monolithic foundation pour. This threw a monkey wrench into my exterior drain plans.
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1st Attempt at installing the drain pipe;

At 1st I decided to slope the ground near the "footer" downward. This was in attempt to get 2" of #57 stone under the drain pipe and keep the pipe flush with the top of the footer.
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Talked with several people on this and the concern was that this could undermine the footer and eventally clog up the drain pipe. Ended up keeping the top of the pipe ~2" above the footer to be flush with the interior floor to prevent any under mining. Had to fill back around the footer with some dirt. My bro stopped by and I put him to work with the hand tamper.
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After talking to a friend's cousin that works for the highway department I changed what type of pipe to use. Originally I settled on using sewer pipe then switched to use corrugated, smooth interior, N-12, HDPE pipe. Bought this in 20 foot sticks from a local commercial plumbing supply house. The yellow rope you see I ran through all the exterior drain pipes up to the cleanouts. Hopefully never have to use it, but its there for future clean out purposes. Figured I'd add it now, can't hurt.
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Installed all the drain pipe with about 2" of #57 stone under the perforated drain pipe followed by #2 washed stone. I did put some landscape fabric under the #57 stone. Ended up using about 40ton of washed #2's and 5ton of the #57 stone. To date I only have the front and side of the house done. Plan is to finish the back of the house this year.
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Wall Prep;

I wish I got more pictures on this 1st go around. If all goes well, I plan to make a how to video when I do the back of the house this year. There isn't a lot of info out there on how to do this.

Before I got all the drain pipe put in I quickly pressure washed all the walls to get the dirt off them. I did this before installing the pipe to keep the slit/dirt out of the stone/pipe as much as I could. I put the drain pipe in and then pressure washed the walls again.

I used an air chisel to chisel out all the metal wire in concrete. These were used for the pouring forms. There were a few cracks where the water was coming in that I chiseled out as well. I put hydraulic cement over all the chiseled out areas.

After pressure washing, chiseling, and applying hydraulic cement. I bought a diamond cup wheel from HFT that goes on an angle grinder. I ground all the concrete boogers off the wall, flattened the cement, and reshaped the fake footer to be more square. If you do this be sure to wear hearing/eye protection and a respirator made for silica dust. I did grind the front wall with out the proper respirator, just a dust mask, before I read up on silica dust.

You can see the cleaned up walls and footer in some of the other pictures.

With the walls now prepped, now time for the blueskin. I ended up getting this product from home depot in Canada, as I couldn't find it locally. Seems you have to be a contractor or special order a large amount to get this in the US. No one had it. However I did find 1 roll of the stuff, the sealant, and adhesive glue locally.

I put a bead of delta's MS sealant where the footer meets the wall. Let that dry for a day then rolled on the blue skin adhesive as I installed the WP200. I ordered the solvent based stuff based on what I read online, as it seems to adhere better than the water-based stuff. Had to use a chem respirator mask for this stuff, strong smell very similar to urinal cakes. lol

I opted to seal all the WP200 seams up with sealant. Cost wasn't that much more and made sense. Manufacturers instructions say to seal only the bottom 12" of "T" joints seams. Also, have to roll the WP200 after putting it on this was a pain....
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Next up was to get the delta MS on the wall.

Due to having the drain pipe ~2" higher than the footer because of the monolithic basement pour. I ordered 9' rolls of the delta MS and used the cut off at the bottom edge of the footer to the edge of the drain pipe. Then added more stone over that and put on the full sheets on per manufacturers instructions. Seemed to work out fine, probably not ideal.
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Again, couldn't find this stuff locally. Went to Canada again to get the delta MS, sealant, and brackets from Lowes. Turns out there is a local business that installs this and he has a monopoly on the stuff, the distributor wouldn't sell it to me. Several phone calls to the company and regional sales reps just turned out to be dead ends. However found out it is readily available in Canada.

This stuff attaches to the concrete wall with delta's orange brackets, using a .22 powered nailer. Well that works on fresh concrete that is "soft"....... I ended up having to tapcon all the brackets on. The .22 power nail just blew decent size holes in the concrete without hammering the nail home. Tried differen't powered .22s without much luck. This added more time to install.

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PinballTilt Probably overkill..... but yes, there was one crack on the front wall from top to bottom that always leaked water in and a few other spots that were always damp. The ground here is all clay and it just holds the water. The flat land here doesn't help either. The sump pump runs a lot. I figured this would keep the walls dry/leak free. Plus allow me to finish the interior walls and not have to worry about future leaks or mold. So far huge difference with the front and 1 end wall done. The dehumidifier actually shuts off now. haha

Nice! I'm thinking of using the DMX airflow on the floor then ridged core vinyl directly over that. Looked into the FL and my floor is pretty uneven. Figured it would click a lot and didn't want to do the extra step of putting landscape fabric down and osb. I think the DMX airflow is a newer product that allows you to skip the osb and fabric. It has a closed cell foam backer to reduce the clicks.

We did something similar to what you described a long time ago for the wall cracks. We chiseled out the wall crack enough for a slit a garden hose to go into. Then chiseled out the floor to get the hose into the interior perimeter drain, and filled in all the chiseled out areas with hydraulic cement. Worked but still leaked sometimes. I looked in to having those wall panels put in all the way around the basement interior with new interior perimeter drain and was quoted $45k

Congrads on finishing! A lot of work for sure. I'm going on year 3 here. lol

Sounds like you drain to "daylight" wish I could do that as well but land is just too flat. Definitely the way to go if you can!

Time to backfill with the washed #2s

I used "batting" board between the dirt and stone while putting the stone in. This was to help build up the stone higher/use less and keep the dirt out of it. I pulled the landscape fabric that is under the #57 stone up along the outer edge as well. I used that cheap cardboard like 4x8 sheets found in any big box store. Once its saturated with water it pretty much allows water to pass and falls apart.
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The vertical 2' pipe is the outside sump pit. The location will change when I get to doing the back of the house. Plan to cut it off almost flush with the final grade level.
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I used metal stakes to hold the boards up, well one was a fence post stake with those "ears" on it, and put in too close to the water line. Of course it wouldn't come out so I had to use the loader tractor and a chain. Well that got it out but not without putting a hole in the water line on its way....... A call to the town for a shut off request and a couple of unions later.....
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The delta MS gets finished off with their strips along the verticals and top end points. These get nailed on as well or in my case I used tapcons. The directions say to use a nail every 8", I went with 12". Then these get sealed up with a bead of the delta sealant.
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Added some gutter drains along the front and side while I had all the ground opened up.
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Next I back filled everything with dirt. Added another layer of landscape fabric on top of the stone, then a layer of hay from old round bails that the farmer down the road was looking to get rid of.
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Good eye! I wasn't too worried about it at the time, because the shop has 2 rods that are overkill. I did have to move the rod inward as it was in the way of the drain pipe. Had a hell of a time getting it out as it was still 5-6 feet in the ground past the footer. Never bothered to measure the resistance on it.

Since then I had a 200amp service put in. Guy that did it added 2 more rods (to meet code) and left the original one where it was as well. Way overkill now.