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Mark's From the Ground up Cinema Build

115K views 416 replies 80 participants last post by  IGO2XS 
#1 ·
Here I am ready to build my theater room and I thought why not start my own thread. I have for most of my life been interested in building and music. As a drummer in my 7th and 8th grade years I started building speaker cabinets for our young rock band. Even at that time I liked big speakers..I would build a cabinet 6 foot tall and put 1 twelve inch speaker in it from radio shack.ha ha. Although I am describing myself over 35 years ago not much has changed. To this day I still play drums, enjoy building projects, and love sound and music. Last year I sold our home of 20 years so we could build a new home..well, honestly I sold our home so I could build a theater room from the ground up and at the last minute decided to build a house around the theater..lol! Although not a licensed contractor I have had a lot of building experience. I have remodeled quite a few homes and did extensive work on our last home. I remodeled our kitchen and my theater room 3 times during these 20 years. I have spent the last two years designing the build of our new home and monster garagemy other passion is cars and I know I am on the wrong forum for cars but I figure cars, theater rooms, its all the same thing, right?. Don't ask me how I was able to pull this off but we built my garage first which also featured a guest apartment we could temporarily move in to. I mean heck, we needed storage for our stuff!! Right? The garage had to come first. As it turned out this was the perfect way we could build our house and live 60 feet away and watch the house as it was built. I am acting as general contractor/homeowner and it is really quite exciting. I was even able to set up a temporary theater in a portion of this garage.

As any home theater guy would do having the opportunity to build a new home, I managed to squeeze out what I feel is an adequate sized theater room of 19 x 25 and a 8 x 11 equipment room. My wife gets to have the rest of the house. The main theater room is comprised of two levels for the theater seating and my ceiling is 10' on main level and 11' 6 in the lower level. The room is construction is primarily concrete..concrete slab, concrete block walls, and the balance will be 2 x 6 walls. The AV equipment will be installed in the equipment room but visible from the main theater room. Both rooms will be climate controlled by a dedicated HAVC system.

In the overall design, I plan on installing large diameter PVC conduit to key audio/video areas in the home to future proof later developments in cable. I plan on distributing my video throughout the house via cat5e or cat6 cable. I will probably run some curtest RG6 coax in the house but not sure how much it will be used. The primary location we watch TV is our media room but I do plan on installing TV's throughout the house.

I do have most of the equipment for my theater room which I will list:

Lexicon MC-8 balanced processor

Lexicon RT-10 disk player

(2) Genelec 1034B Main Monitors
http://www.genelec.com/products/main-monitors/1034b/

(1) Genelec 1038BC Center Channel Monitor

(4) Genelec AIW26 Active In-Wall Loudspeakers for sides and rears.
http://www.genelec-ht.com/active-2-way/aiw26/

(2) Genelec HTS4B's (although dreaming about a Genelec HTS6)
http://www.genelecusa.com/ht/products/subwoofers/hts4b/




When I sold my house I also brought with me the 7 theater chairs from my old theater. It will definitely not be enough seating for the room so I will have to figure out a solution. I am considering adding a couch on the lower level but it is too soon for me to make this decision.


On the equipment front I will ask for help determining a projector, screen (size matters!), Blu-Ray player. I had been using a MX-3000 remote control by Universal but looking for options. Fiber optic ceiling and floor lighting.


For lighting control I have chosen Lutron. I have Lutron Homework's 8 Series Processor running the garage system until I move it to the main equipment room in the house. Yes, I got a little crazy with the garage and I have lighting control. We have fountains and lots of exterior lighting, landscape, sconces, soffit lights around building, etc and it is nice to have the capabilities to program scenes so the night time lighting gets turned on and off at the proper time. I have 2 inch conduit connecting the small equipment room in the garage to the main equipment room in the house and I will be able to share the Lutron processor between both buildings. Once the house is finished the processor will be moved to the house and will be connected to the garage to maintain function of the garage keypads. The Lutron system is pretty awesome and the iPhone app allowing me to control the lighting is pretty fun. The garage is pretty big so it saves a lot of steps. We have relays set up on the Lutron so I can open any garage door on the building, turn on and off lights, turn on relay to start compressor, etc, etc.


IP Camera system software is by Exacq Technologies. I have a combination of Acti and Vivotek camera's (6 cameras at the moment. We have almost 4 acres of property and I have installed over 3600 feet of conduit to feed cat5 cable and other wiring. I currently have cameras in multiple locations on the property.


In conclusion, I have a lot of work to do. The biggest issue I have to tackle is the room interior design. Yes, believe it or not I designed the house and garage elevations and floor plans but did not dive too far into the theater room. Our house is an Old World theme and I will carry this over to the theater room. I have some stone columns to build in the theater, plan on a fiber optic ceiling but otherwise I have a clean slate. Looking forward to sharing ideas.
 
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#2 ·
This is a copy of my building plans showing the home theater room and equipment room. Yes, there is a large window in this room on purpose. If the theater is used in the daytime I plan on having a motorized curtain to blackout the room. I have a pond behind my home with landscaping, lighting, and a fountain I think will look cool at night while watching a movie.
 
#3 ·

Picture taken from screen wall toward back of theater.
Picture taken from approximate location of entry door to theater room.
you can see a portion of my garage out the window on the above picture
 
#4 ·

this is the view out the theater room window. the fountain is lighted up at night with led underwater lighting. I guess I will see how this effect will work in the real world. If it is too distracting I guess I can just close the curtain.
 
#5 ·
Welcome, looking forward to following your progress. Have any night shots of the fountain lit up through that HT window?
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Horstkotte /forum/post/19276503


Welcome, looking forward to following your progress. Have any night shots of the fountain lit up through that HT window?

Preferably with some alligators swimming in the pool
 
#7 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Moggie /forum/post/19276530


Preferably with some alligators swimming in the pool

i have some big soft shell turtles in the pond and their heads look just like an alligators head.
 
#8 ·
thanks Brad, I was subscribed to your thread. I will try to get a picture one of these nights.
 
#9 ·

The framing crew was back in on Friday and finished the small portion of wall in the media room as well and framed the equipment room. I have quite a few 1 1/2" conduits stubed out in the concrete. 4 of the pipes run to the front of the room for each of the main speakers, center channel, and sub-woofers. The Genelec speakers have some large connecting cables running from the speakers to the amps. Each of the mains and center channel speakers are tri-amped. The other conduits are for connecting the Lutron lighting system to combine the detached garage lighting control to the house. I have a pair of conduits running to another house on the property owned by my brother as sometime in the future we will be connected with fiber. Still other 1 1/2" conduits running throughout the property distributing cat 5 cable for the ip camera system. There are currently 14 conduits entering the equipment room through the slab. I do plan on running conduit through the ceiling to key audio video areas in the house so I can have the flexibility to add or change wiring. I will be running my hdmi cables over the cat 5 cable distributed through the house.
 
#10 ·
Holy crap, that's a huge space. Love it. And the view out the window is awesome.


Good luck on the build.
 
#11 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Drew_V /forum/post/19279938


Holy crap, that's a huge space. Love it. And the view out the window is awesome.


Good luck on the build.

Thanks Drew! I am looking forward to this project!
 
#13 ·
Great Project but from the blue print I'm not convinced that the front screen wall is properly designed. First the front corner pilasters seem oddly located. Do you know what size screen you are planning? Have you thought about doing an acoustically transparent front false wall to hide all your speakers?


Will you be soundproofing and acoustically treating the space? I see 3 AC units on the outside of the front wall. Keeping that sound out will be critical.


Tell us about your thoughts on projector and screen budget and whether putting the front speakers behind the screen is something you would entertain.


Have you thought through the screen format 16:9 versus 2.35:1?
 
#14 ·
I agree with your point on the columns. I had the architect draw them on the plan realizing they would need to be properly located in the room. I am of the theory that I will let the room build itself so I figured they would be placed once I had a room designed. Good question on the screen, I was thinking about 10 foot wide.....I am really waffling on 16:9 vs 2:35:1 format. On the one hand I like the taller picture with the 16:9 but I realize 2:35 seems the way home theater is going. This is one of the many reasons i am on this forum is to listen to you guys and find a direction. I had my good buddy try to talk me into the acoustically transparent screen but I balked at this idea because 1. I spent a bunch of money on my speakers and I want to see them. (sounds intelligent doesn't it?) and 2) the speakers are pretty large and I did not want to move the screen out in the room another 2 feet or more. Because I have already made the investment in the speakers and processor I am pretty open to the projector and screen purchase.....say under $10K for both. Soundproofing is a concern and yes i plan on doing this. The wall between the a/c units and the theater room is concrete block. In Florida we are filling about every 4th block cell with concrete (130 mph wind loads).....the three open cells in between the filled cells I will fill with an injected foam. The inside of the walls have 3/4 inches of foam, a 3/4 inch air space for furring strips, and then drywall. On the drywall I do plan on adding accoustical panels. I will also build some kind of wall unit to house speakers and screen.


Great points and your input is very much appreciated.
 
#16 ·

I want to show you what I did in my last theater room. I had all of the speakers visible in the wall unit we built. I am really in to the design and fabrication of the rooms. The metal you see is stainless steel and a friend of mine built the stainless valance that traveled all the way around the top of the room and then built the columns from stainless. You cant see but we had a 12 x 12 stainless beam across the top.....this room had a cathedral ceiling. Of course this was contemporary and I want a more traditional room this time. I had other acoustic treatments in the room not seen in this photo. I wish I would have taken more pictures of this theater.
 
#17 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by BIGmouthinDC /forum/post/19283688


The time it would take to read the library of articles at Soundproofingcompany.com would be worth the time you invest.

Will do my friend.....thanks!!
 
#18 ·
I dont think the A/c compressors will be a sound issue. Is that 18" drop off going to be dangerous for folks.. Especially if you have a bar in the room..

This is going to be a killer room. When I look at such a large control/equipment room I see a window in that wall so you could see in/out.? I imagine the view will be interesting and neat.
 
#19 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by elkski /forum/post/19283751


I dont think the A/c compressors will be a sound issue. Is that 18" drop off going to be dangerous for folks.. Especially if you have a bar in the room..

This is going to be a killer room. When I look at such a large control/equipment room I see a window in that wall so you could see in/out.? I imagine the view will be interesting and neat.

Great idea. i like the window idea, guess it would make it look like a recording studio. I will try to make it work. It is a pretty large drop.....I had this much drop in my last theater, guess i did not want to see the person's head in front of me. i figure if people have enough to drink they wont feel the sudden stop when they fall off the 18" riser!!
 
#20 ·



There have been a few developments in the theater build. We have framed in 60 x 60 inch opening in the front of the equipment room. I will be mounting 3 racks in this space to house my equipment. No more pulling equipment out to work on cables. NICE!!



My first cable order arrived yesterday. 5000 feet of Cat6, 1000 feet of Cat5e I might use for telephone lines, and 1000 feet of direct burial Cat5e for some additional outdoor ip cameras. Each TV location in the house will get (4) Cat6 wires and one RG6 cable. I am putting the cable in just to have it but probably will not get used. Looking at a Wyrestrorm HDMI matrix switcher to distribute audio and video to TV monitors.


Check this out. We spent the last 2 days building my ceiling detail. There are 6 columns that will be wrapped in stone to match the old world theme we are going with. There are 3 arches that extend from side to side. We then added two more arches than cross in the middle. The arches will have stone venere and some faux paint. I am thinking of installing mini led lights in the arches to keep the ceiling as clean as possible. The flat part of the ceiling will have accoustic panels with fabric stretched over the top. I want the panels on the ceiling to be seamless. I have working on a ceiling theme for months now and this just came to me 5 days ago. I taped up a 10 wide screen but thinking something more like 12 to 13 feet wide.



I am using the same ceiling arches in our foyer as I used in the theater. Wife is very happy with what i came up with.
 
#22 ·
thanks BM, we ended up locating the columns based on the arches and not as drawn on the plan.
 
#24 ·
It will be very visually interesting but I dont like the stone idea on the beams.

IT would be great to have stone bases but the beams should look like wood or Steel with fake rivets depending on how old you are trying to look. If you are thinking about just covering with Harristone or equivalent fake stone it will look funny and did you measure how many ln ft of expensive corner stones you will need?? My main concern is unless you make the stones very tight fitting and large to look like locking stones it will just look fake as real stones cant be set like that. Even for stone arches using keystones and tight fitting the arches are to wide for the height. A good painter artist could make those look like any age or type of wood beams you desire.
 
#25 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by IGO2XS /forum/post/19283669


Soundproofing is a concern and yes i plan on doing this. The wall between the a/c units and the theater room is concrete block. The inside of the walls have 3/4 inches of foam, a 3/4 inch air space for furring strips, and then drywall.

This will create a problematic wall. Perhaps construction has progressed too far at this time, however that small air cavity next to the block will reduce the isolation of the wall. See the end of this article for lab data: http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/...e_leaf_effect/
 
#26 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by elkski /forum/post/19358265


It will be very visually interesting but I dont like the stone idea on the beams.

IT would be great to have stone bases but the beams should look like wood or Steel with fake rivets depending on how old you are trying to look. If you are thinking about just covering with Harristone or equivalent fake stone it will look funny and did you measure how many ln ft of expensive corner stones you will need?? My main concern is unless you make the stones very tight fitting and large to look like locking stones it will just look fake as real stones cant be set like that. Even for stone arches using keystones and tight fitting the arches are to wide for the height. A good painter artist could make those look like any age or type of wood beams you desire.

Thanks for your idea on the beams! Stone was the first idea we came up with but certainly not a final decision. I do like the thought of rivits with a gothic or old world look. Either fabricated from steel or done by a clever faux painter. I will put your idea in the think tank.
 
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