Is my room going to suck


I am looking for any advise for the room I am being banished to. Planning on doing this within the next couple of weekends. Currently I have an not ideal setup as I have a 7 month old that goes to bed at 7:00 and and our living room is open to the stairway and her room is right at the top. The other room is descent at around 16x22 but speakers and equipment would be in front of the fireplace so wife says no go. 
My best option is to move into the basement and rig it out best I can. Room is 15Lx8.5Wx10H with concrete floor and side walls. Just looking for suggestions on best way to wrangle the best sound out of here as possible. 
Thanks
mofojo
It should work out well. George Cardas has developed some very useful speaker placement formulas for rectangular rooms.  Check it out.

http://www.cardas.com/room_setup_rectangular_room.php

Best of luck
Update. Moved my gear into the basement. My merlins sound amazing down there. I'm glad they didn't sell when i had them posted. I have some oc703 panels hung around and a little bit of carpet I found. Next step is building some corner bass traps, hanging more 703s, and getting a close to room size carpet remnant. Thanks for the suggestions it turned out much better than I would have thought.