Breaking the rules theater build - Page 12

Good stuff Dave, these are some tuff economic times for a lot folks every bit helps. It's great when folks can step up and help out individuals, families and communities. With such a large event such as ours we are bound to have people who kind of abuse the whole spirit and reason for the event, but we really had an overwhelming amout of people who were really so appreciative of the whole thing.

We had the facility donated to us including the personnel who maintain it. We had to hire 2 police officers for crowd control and they were floored by the whole event. They mentioned how great it was that people would do something like this for the community, and how sad it was that something like this doesn't get the media attention that it deserves, yet when something bad happens in the neighborhood, it's the first thing on the news.

We had a lot of people wanting to know how they could help out and volunteer their time next year.

One of the best stories I heard was from one of my good buddies at church. He overheard an excited child say to his mom "Look it's Santa Claus, can we get in line to take a picture with him?" he heard the mom respond "I'm sorry but I didn't bring any money to take a picture with Santa". My buddy was able to step in and say, "mam don't worry this whole event, everything here is free, you just have to wait a few minutes in line to get your picture". Really makes all the hard work worth it.

Hello folks, finally time for an update. I finally got around to doing something worthwhile and worthy of pics. I needed to do something about my equipment closet as it was bugging the heck out of me. I was using a 4 foot wide shelf on casters which I thought would be ideal to let the equipment breath and at the same time move out so I could get in the closet to access equipmet and wiring. Unfortunately the shelf measured wall to wall and would barely pull out with no real space for me to get in and out.

Here is a pic of the rig I was using before


I replaced this with 2 vertical shelf bars and four 2 feet wide wire shelves again to allow the equipment to breath. I was trying to decide wether to go with the white or black shelf. Black would be cooler but then again it was gonna be in the closet out of site. Well when I moved over an aisle I found the same type of closetmaid system I was eyeballing but marketed towards a garage setup. It has a dark grey finish with a hammered look. It matched nicely with my trim and door colors, so my decision was made for me when I saw this.

The new set up




A closer look at the finish



This shot helps to see the space I now have to step into to do maintenance



I still have to tidy up wires and put my 4gang decora wall plates on but here you can see where wiring connects for video netwoking, speakers, Internet etc..


The left side of the closet features my homebrew powerbridge solution. I wired an outlet from the projector and used armored cable which I had left over from a previous project. I wired it in the box with a bx clamp and blank wall plate and put a replacement outlet plug on the end.



Still need to get a surge protector/battery backup/power conditioner though.

Thanks guys,

It definately was a worthwhile event and we were at another one on the 20th for the City of Brockton. We had our first big snow storm of the year that weekend but we still had over 500 families show up. The New England Dream Center is a great organization which is trying to do as many of these events as possible. They had four this year and are shooting for 7-8 next year.

An unexpected thing happened during the Brockton event. We had someone call and wanted to volunteer her and her daughters time at a local soup kitchen which is ran by the local guy who was in charge of this Dreams & Wishes event. She said she wanted to do this because they live a privledged life and wanted her daughter to see the other side of life.

It just so happened that Reebok for Christmas does a big event where they go to the same city and pick up and shuttle all the homeless folks to their facility for their own event so that the soup kitchen would be closed. He told her though that he had this other event where she would certainly be welcome to volunteer and help. He just needed her information and where she worked to verify her.

Funny thing was she was trying to understand the whole event and was trying to see what the catch was. My friend told her all the family has to do is register ahead of time and show up for a great event, no catch.

Well the event came and went & it was a huge success with the help of all the volunteers. A few day later, the Tuesday before Christmas he gets a call from this person to tell him about how much enjoyment and happiness they felt and how great the whole event was. That it truly was an event to help the community with no strings attached. However, she had to confess that she wasn't totally honest about who she was and what she did for a living. At this point my freind begins to panic and doesn't know if he made a grave mistake in letting this person help out at the event.

She proceeds to tell him that she is actually the Regional CEO of a huge national co. and that she wasn't really forthcoming because she wanted to see if we were for real. She the told us that whenever we do an event such as this for the community that we have the full support of her entire region. Amazingly....this is a true story

As far as the rack, it's working out great. Much, much better, I am able to step in now and comfortable do whatever I need to do. Like I said before I still need to do some wire management, but another nice thing about this shelf system is that with the gap which is created by the vertical bars it allows me to fish the wiring down behind the equipment. It makes a nice wide channel to help tidy things up.

Thanks Tom,

Looking to get back on the HT horse at this point. Started working on trimming out my Starpanel. Hope to get it set up this weekend. I have basic trim for it right now but I'll put crown around it when I do crown on my soffits for rope light.

I posted some nicer screen shots on my screen build thread, rather than reposting here I put a link on my sig line.

Forgot to post a pic




The flash makes the trim and ceiling a lot lighter in color over what it actually is in true life. Trim is very dark as is the ceiling, when looking at both in person it is hard to tell the colors apart in the darkened theater room.

I got the star panel up on new years day. Here are some pics of the process and almost finished product. Like I said before I will be putting crown trim around the exterior to give it a more finished look. I'll do this when I get the crown for the soffit light tray.

Painting the trim



First piece in place


Panel in place


all trimmed out starting to trim the fibers


Lights off


The units I bought are the RGB type which provide multiple colors. I like the blue and blue white. I need to get the dongle from stardesigner so I can create some custom programs with the colors I prefer and the twinkle effect.





View from the back row loveseat


Sorry their a little fuzzy, tough to get these shots.

Thanks.. Dont let that stop you

There was another member on here that did just that with a drop ceiling. Turned out pretty sweet.

I found his thread check it out.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post13326542

Your gonna get in big trouble aren't you

I feel your pain, I started with just a big tv and surround sound. Once we started looking for a new home though I knew I wanted a home with a basement that I could make a theater. The Mrs. on the other hand wanted a simple tv and family room downstairs. My argument was what would we do with a perfectly good tv and family room on the first floor. She still gets mad with me every now and then but everyone who comes over is blown away and tell her how proud she should be. She enjoys it, but she doesn't want to make it to obvious to me.

Good stuff Iusteve,

Sounds like your well on your way into the fun. Like you I'm more of a sketch on paper type of person. I tried sketch up but felt like it was taking me longer than just sketching something out. As long as your willing to try something and doing a little research (also asking for help here when needed) and you'll be fine. Good luck with your project.

Need to get busy, this project will get done this year.... I have to set new goals to move it along.

I have to finish my drop ceiling with in ceiling speakers over the pool table area.
I have to buy and install recessed light trims for the whole basement.
I need to design and install kitchenette counter/concession area, this includes a sink with a pump plumbed in.
I have to install laminate flooring.
I have to create lighted poster boxes and marquee sign.
I have to create and install fabric frames for the walls, screen wall.
I have to create fabric covers for the front and back of the projector bay.
I have to cover the lower side of the soffits and install crown for ropelights and crown to surround the star panel.
I have to purchase and install a flat panel in the rec room.
I have to install a pool table light.
I have to finish installing some electrical outlets and wall plates.
I have to touch up paint.
I have to cover up columns and do baseboard trim.
I have to put in the electrical closet door. I have to install a vent fan for my equipment closet.


List is longer than I first anticipated, that's all I can think of for now. My stretch goal will be to finish all of these things by the end of June. Feeling anxious already

They won't necessarily be done in this order. In fact they likely wont.


Edit: List is being updated as I go, when things get done the font color will changed to red.

Glad I could help,

I have to stay on top of this. At first glance it looks daunting but one step at a time will get me there. Creating the list motivated me to keep going last night on the drop ceiling. When I ran out of the perimeter track I needed, I moved on to some electrical and wall plates. In the back of my mind I was thinking about shrinking the list...

That's a good reason for having a delay in the build. Bummer about the speaker, I'm like the poster child though for faulty equipment. It seems like every other electronic which I've purchased in the past 2 years has required an exchange or being sent in for service.

Let me see, the Wii 2 service repairs finally exchanged by Nintendo for a new one.

Key Digital Scaler, audio was interminent and had to be exchanged for a new unit.

PS3 wassss reallyyyyy slowwwwww, updatessss weerreee takinggggg forrrreveeeerrrrrr. Something didn't seem right, so I took it back for a new one, the new one updated in 15 minutes vs. 3 hours for the previous one.

Tom Tom the Mrs. bought me for Christmas locked up due to software updates from Tom Tom and then was missing some features which were supposed to be part of the unit once I got it going again, returned it for a new unit. This was the most fun as Best Buy was arguing with me that since she bought it online they couldn't exchange. Yet I could pick it up there, I could return it, but they couldn't exchange???? My wife had gotten a special price online so one call to their online division while at the store and their response is that their is no reason they shouldn't be able to do the exchange. Manager finally price matched the special deal...

Reminds me of the times my wife went into labor. The morning of she knew it was gonna happen, but knowing that she would be sent back home if she went to the hospital, she wasn't ready to go in yet. In fact she insisted that I go to work, only to have to turn around just about as soon as I got through with my 45 min. to hour commute.

Best of luck Will I hope everything goes well for mom and the little one.

BTW enjoy every moment, feels like only yesterday my son was born On Friday he just got his learners permit

No problem, thanks for the compliment. Just as an FYI for others the panel is made with 2 LED light units which I purchased from StarDesigner. The fiber optics are threaded from there. Their is network control card connected to these light units via cat5. The card is placed in the projector bay and this allows me to provide power to the card. The card has an IR receiver and this allows me to control my star panel with my Harmony 880.

I simply have to set a Sony TV as a device and the channel up and down allows me to select my color modes. Volume affects the sparkle effect. The stars themselves aren't dimmable, but I did give some of the stars a more dim effect by pushing fibers further in than the rest. I did this with my random stars which I inserted to the light units after my first round of fiber threading. Even though they cant be dimmed, the brightness is just right and not at all distracting (I'm not sure if this the case with his newer units). The first night we saw a movie after I put the panel up I had them on and it was just right.

Also the card features 8 outputs for seperate leds which can be connected via cat5 cable. These connections are dimmable by a rate of 25% each time. The plan is to put 4-8 blue leds behind the screen to showcase the speakers... Should look great when it's done.

Show all the chick flicks you want!!! The baby factory in my home is closed for business. Has been now for about 8 years.... The Mrs. and I decided that we didn't want our kids to be more than 4 yrs apart like my son and daughter, when my daughter hit 4 we made the decision that we were all set. Besides we had a boy and a girl couldn't ask for much more, with my luck I probably would have ended up with twins or triplets...

Also we started really young, so we wanted to be able to enjoy ourselves and do things that we had to sacrifice because we started our family so soon in our young relationship. It's funny we now get to see most of our friends just getting started with kids and building their family. We get to laugh at the different little things that their pulling their hair out for. We enjoy babysitting but at the end of the day we get to give them back.