when someone or magazine says $25K HT does that usually include contruction costs like putting up walls and soundproofing, or are they just refering to AV equipment and seating?

Well It kind of depends on the Magazine or person. On here sometimes people list the construction costs and sometimes they list the equipment costs.
In my case I was redoing and existing room so I would say the actual construction costs run about 5K to 8K, seating and decorating another 4K and equipment about 40K+ at this point.
I did not use any professional help at all in mine. Obviously if you hire out any of it, it will be a great deal more.

It really depends on how extravagant you get. I'm doing everything myself and when it's all done I'll probably be around 20K. As soon as you get someone else involved the price can go up quickly . I figured that I'll save around 5-8K doing all aspects of the construction myself. So to try to answer our question, if your done the work yourself you could build a nice theater for 25K

Just my .02

I beleive magazine articles usually state the total costs. As for the DIY'ers, I think a lot of little expenses go unaccouted for, but generally include electronics and room construction costs.

to hire someone to do everything i'm assuming it would cost double.

how about to hire someone just for sketches, drawing and acosutic planning and then i would handle everything else. do people do that and how much ballpark does that cost?

i'm thinking that might be my best bet because one miscalculation could mess up a otherwise great ht setup.

Hm that is a good questions you know I did all of the labor on my project my self. Took me about1 month to get to 90% then I had to travel.. But I spent well over 25k just materials dam near 50 with equipment. So I'm not sure that would include labor.

As others have said, it probably depends, but it can be done pretty cheaply DIY.

I renovated a room in my house (sheetrocked in windows, added sconces, lighting zones, built riser, built half wall, built-in equipment rack with DVD storage, carpeted, painted, added chair rail, fabric below chair rail, replaced ceiling fan, projector shelf, etc.) all for a grand total of $2500. Took about 80 man hours over a 4-5 month period.

Add in my equipment and the total cost of the room was just over $10,000.