Thanks Sharon! And your basement shop looks like mine too... Corner location for the mill, a pipe behind it, and a window above it!
The main difference is my walls are painted. I did that because I had a hairline crack in the foundation and water was seeping in. So, I tried that DRYLOK paint. It ultimately didn't work because the water just went behind the paint and came out at floor level. So, I had to repair the crack (chipped out the crack and filled it with hydraulic cement). But I noticed that where I painted the lighting was much better - so I painted the whole shop with leftover antique white latex. The shop just feels better (less like a dungeon) and the lighted is vastly improved.
Getting back to the DRO. It seems to work great. I ended up mounting the X scale head like I mentioned in post 12. Drilling out the tapped holes in the read head was a cinch. I made them very generous clearance holes to allow me to align the head.
The only thing I have left to do is make a way cover for the Y axis.
John