Should I spend the time even designing something for this room?

This forum is awesome. I just love reading about all the builds and wish I had a huge basement to do a dedicated theater in but maybe the next house.

I just bought a new house last month. One of the reasons we picked this house was because it was big enough on the first floor for "everyday living" but then had more space upstairs for "other things". These other things consist of a home office, playroom, possibly guest room, and a TV area. We have toyed around with how to do this upstairs as there is only two rooms, a "bedroom" and a bonus room to go along with a full bath and a large hall closet.

Our latest design is to have the bedroom be a playroom/guestroom and the bonus room will be our media room/home office. Here is a couple of pictures of our bonus room:

From the stairs:


The dormer on the right side:


Left wall:


Dormer/right wall:


Hallway and stairs on the "back wall":


The room measures approximately 12'7" W x 30' 6" long x 8' H. The flat part of the ceiling is 7' W. The left wall tapers to a height of 67 3/4" and the right wall tapers to 69".

For now my office will be at the end of the room with an L shaped desk around the window. The TV area is going to be at the end near the stairs with the TV going on the left wall along with the fronts and a sub as well as a built-in equipment rack between the half wall and the dwarf-door leading to storage.

If I do a dedicated theater in this room my thought is to build out a false wall at the end of the room, hiding the window, use an AT screen (size TBD), possibly a stage if I have enough height, have two rows of seating with 3 chairs each or a couch/love seat arrangement. The back row will be on a riser. The room would then either have a false wall at the rear or be open as it currently stands. I would still need to leave room for an office toward the stairs.

Now my questions:

1. If I do a false wall for an AT screen how much room should be between the existing wall and the false wall?

2. Approximately what size screen do you think is "doable"?

3. How far would that put my viewing distance for each row?

4. I would need to leave room behind the last row for walking space. How much?

5. What should I do for construction? The room is above the garage with no other rooms directly adjoining, although the hallway at the back of the room leads to a full bath and bedroom. The walls are all insulated as is the floor and ceiling. I see no need to rip the drywall out, except for maybe some help in running wires for the PJ, lights, and speakers, but I can get behind the existing walls through the storage doors (which the storage will need to be retained for our extra junk and Christmas stuff, etc.) and can get on top of the ceiling through other attic access. Should I still do double drywall with GG in between?

6. I would likely do a rear soffit for the PJ if the distance worked out, but what about side soffits with the sloped walls? I was thinking I could come straght down for the edge of the flat celing with the soffit, maybe just a small one at 6" or so for crown molding and possibly some can lights.

7. What do I do with the dormer on the right? I could do an equipmetn rack there but maybe a small concession area instead and leave the equipment rack outside the room.

Are there any other obstacles to overcome with this room that you can see?

Sorry for such a long post, but thanks for any advice you could give.

Thanks for the comments so far everyone. I will definitely try out my gear in the room and see how it performs and what kind of issues I have with sound in other areas of the house (shouldn't be much honestly unless I leave the back wall open).

whiskey alpha: The ceiling height is 8' but the flat part is 7' wide before it starts to slope on the sides.

McCall: 24" will likely work for my current gear and any of the stuff I have been looking at, although I seriously doubt I will upgrade for quite some time. The gear I have now has great value as I paid a fraction of retail price for what I own from working in the business years ago. Juding by your 12.5 feet to the second row I figured I would need ~19 feet of total depth if I build a back wall, which leaves enough room for an office.

Now I need to start working on some plans, saving some money and doing lots and lots of reading.

I have spent some time working with Sketchup for the first time and I have run into a couple of problems that I would like suggestions:

I have the screen wall 2' from the back wall and the stage comes out another 16" on the ends and a total of 34" at the edge of the curve. After placing my 6.5' W x 5'D riser 3' from the back and side walls I am left with only 66" between the riser and stage for more seating (the depth of several Berkline Recliners). IS this too tight? This also places the front row with a viewing distance of 8' and the rear row approx 12.5'. One thought is to use speakers that can be placed closer to the back wall and make the screen wall closer to the original room wall. If I do that I won't have enough room for a sub or two behind the false wall (time to buld my own IB setup below the screen?).

Now the dormer also poses another problem. How would I do my right side surround in a 7.1 setup? It looks like I would need to close in the dormer area maybe.

Any other areas of concern that you can see? I thought about doing soffits but I don't think it would look right and I would lose too much headroom.

There is still a possibility of leaving it open, but the main reasons for the wall are:

1. To help keep sound in the room since the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom is open. Sound would travel directly down the hall.

2. To section off the room and still allow room for an office.

3. To help with light control.

4. To give me a place to put rear surrounds.

And I agree the dormer looks like it will have to be closed off. Keep the ideas coming though.

If I went this route what would you suggest for seating? Since I have an angled roof seats will not be able to be placed against the walls if they are on a riser.

As you can see from my previous post there are a couple of reason for the back wall but I still may leave it open.

No progress on HT front, but I started construction on my shed this weekend and I know you guys like sheds. I will post some pics later.

Thanks for the sarcasm! This is precisely why I didn't want to do this, but several others here asked me to share my progress. If you notice this thread was started long before any shed and the only place I could think to share it with others here. If you have no interest in seeing it then don't look. Simple really.

LOL. I wish. I'm not building any HT outside until I build one inside!

So the plan is to build a 10x12 with a double door and a single window. For the past year and a half I have been using a Rubbermaid shed to store my stuff. It sucks! Too small for anything really. Here you can see the area I am using for the shed and the one being replaced.



I started digging the holes for the 6 concrete piers that will provide the support for 2 4x6 skids. I started in the back corner hoping that I wouldn't fin my drainage pipe that leads to the ditch behind my fence. About 10" down I found it. I would have only needed to move the pier a few inches so I decided to dig the front one to see if the pipe was there also. I had to use a pick due to the lovely hard ground and about 6 inches down I heard a crunch. This is what I eventually found.



Now, this would normally suck! But I have been thinking about adding gutters and downspouts at some point so I decided to put a "T" in here to tie the shed into this line.



Once the holes were dug I cut the sonotubes to height, mixed up some concrete and set the beams in place.



Next up is the floor joists and plywood. Supposed to rain this weekend so it may be a while.

Gotcha! If I misinterpreted your first post my apologies!

The largest we can build without a permit is a 12x12. But even that extra two feet would position the shed too far out into the yard once the ramp is on. So I stuck with 10x12. My last one was 8x12 (see below) and it was big enough so this should be nice as well.




Thanks for your input!

I need some room for an office so I can't move it all the way to the stairs, not to mention that it would be very difficult to get any furniture up there is I did. But the plans are to have it as far back as I can get away with.


I will definitely use the storage space for equipment and maybe even one for an IB (the right front next to the dormer). I may drop the idea of having two rows though since our primary use will be family only (4 of us). I may do a second row bar to conserve space.


My daughter is quite an entertainer so I thought it would be nice to incorporate a stage for her, but the stage will likely get scrapped or reduced in size to allow room for bean bags or temporary chairs for a larger viewing.

I have my Auto CAD drawings. Basically it will have a similar look to Bigs shed, but with more of an overhang and the door and window are reversed.

Just placed my order at Home Depot for all the remaining lumber, siding, door, and window. They were running 12 months same as cash so I just ordered it all for delivery. Looking at 2 weeks before the door and siding are here. It is supposed to rain this weekend and I will be out of town the following weekend so won't be able to do much anyway. I'll try to get the holes filled and the landscape fabric down before it rains.

Thanks for the link. Running wires won't be a problem. I've already had to run some and it wasn't too difficult.

Here is what I intend the shed to resemble.

No major news on the shed, but I got the holes filled, the drain pipe ready, and put down some landscape fabric. Just waiting for all my supplies to come in for delivery and then I can get to work.

T- fitting for a front and rear downspout collection. I'll put the pipe on when I put the floor joists in. This should allow me to attach the pipe with some slope.


Another view:


My helpers!





And the fabric in place. I got it done with about 2 hours to spare before it rained. That would have been messy!

Everything except my door has arrived so Home Depot was set to deliver yesterday morning. What a fiasco! When I scheduled the delivery I told them they needed to call my cell number so that I could meet the delivery truck at my house and move my truck out of the garage. 11:15 am and no call yet so I called to make sure they put in the instructions to call my cell. They said the driver was running behind and made it seem like there was one other delivery and mine that were to be made, not sure which one first. I said OK and hung up.

3 pm rolls around and still nothing! So I called again. This time the guy tells me that my delivery is scheduled for 3:50 and the driver should be calling me soon. 5 pm rolls around, still no call. So I left work to pick up my kids figuring I was out of luck for the day. On my way I get the call. The driver is lost, but is only a mile away from my house. I asked why I didn't get a phone call. He called, my HOUSE line. He said he never calls the work line which is what they had my cell number under.

So I gave him directions and told him he would have to wait until my wife or I got there. She beat me home so he started loading the stuff into the garage. I'm glad I didn't have to move it all by hand!!!

So here it is, the wood pile (just for Hanes!!!)



So last night after the kids went to bed I started cutting up the wood. I have all the floor joists cut and ready to go, but I can't get to the 3/4 ply for the floor yet. So I started cutting up the studs for the walls. I got the front wall all cut too and labeled for easy assembly. The remianing walls have lots of similar cuts to make so I needed to make a jig to reduce the time to cut all the studs. Now I don't have a fancy shop like some on here (although I would certainly love one!) so I now present my ghetto jig!



That's right, an old speaker box with a couple of scraps on top. The bottom 2x4 is clamped into my work mate and the chop saw is clamped to the workmate as well. I built a "T" that is clamped to the bottom 2x4 as a stop. The working 2x4 then rests on the saw and the "T" ready to cut.



Tonight I hope to cut the remaining studs for the walls as well as the top and bottom plates. This weekend looks like bad weather so I may not be able to get the floor done just yet.

Got the remainder of the studs cut for the walls last night.

Looks like the rain/freezing rain will be moving in tonight through tomorrow so perhaps Sunday I can set some floor joists and plywood, maybe construct a few walls. Only time will tell. If not, I'll start cutting the wood for my trusses.