I'm about to gut my theater and rebuild it

UPDATE: The room is done. To jump directly to pictures of the completed room, click here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...4&postcount=73

My current HT started off as the leftover space from my basement finishing, that I throw my old big screen TV into. It started off like this:




I then decided to create a false front wall to make it look sort of like a small movie screen. It then became this:



I then decided I wanted the whole room to have acoustical treatments, and look more like a dedicated room. so it then became this:



Well my TV recently had an issue, so Best Buy's extended warranty got me a new TV. They've giving me an in store credit for a new TV, which I'm using to buy an Optoma HD71. If I was smart, I would just do the necessary wiring for the projector, and redo the front wall. but I'm getting a little tired of the way it looks, so I thought I would just completely redo it.

I am using this theater (AVS user named "Hed") as inspiration:




My room is very small (current size is 11'wide x 16' long but I'll be expanding into the 8' wide x 5' long behind the rear columns), so it won't look as good as this one, but I'm going to try my best. I'm going to build a stage, have a 16:9 110" screen. I'm going to add side surrounds to go from 5.1 to 7.1, and I'm going to put a small riser behind the current theater seating and try to find a black leather 2 seater couch that matches. The rear columns will then be behind it. The equipment rack will be built into the rack in the wall behind the current seats.

I hope to get my building materials this weekend, and get a good chunk of it done. Wish me luck!

Yes my theater is heavily inspired by bigmouth. He gave me a of of great ideas, and answered a lot of my build related questions.

I love bigreds theater. I would love to do a lot of dark woodwork. However, I am not confident enough in my woodworking skills to pull it off. Black paint can hide a lot of mistakes and bad cuts fixed with wood filler, whereas stain cannot.

Did you mean to say that you CAN fix it with paint and caulk? I've done a fair amount of trim work, and wood filler and paint has fixed every mistake I've made so far. There's just no way to pull that off with stained wood. It has to be basically perfect.

Last night I went and bought all of my wood, except for the trim work. I only had 2 hours to work last night, but I got most of the demo done:




sorry for the crappy pics. I have a Canon 20D, but I was lazy and didn't want to get it out, so I grabbed my Fujifilm Finepix instead. As you can see, it sucks in low light. Future pics will be with the 20D only.

Today I've been working on finishing the demo, and building the stage. I'll post pics of today's work when I'm done working for the day.

End of Day 2.

Demolition finished, got all my wood in the house. Finished the main part of the stage (just have to add the step), and finished the screen wall. up next tomorrow is columns.

Here's Hed's thread where I saw the pics initially: http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/...d.php?t=706907

He's supposed to be getting me some pictures in a brighter light soon. I don't know what fabric that is.

Day 3:

Didn't get a lot done today. Almost finished my stage (just need to get some 2x6s to build the bottom step), started to cover the stage in OSb, and I built my first column. The column was built with 1x8s, but I'm thinking they need to be bigger, so I'm returning the wood tomorrow and getting 1x12s. Thankfully I realized this after I only build 1.

I'm also starting to think that maybe the extensions to the stage come out too far. I'll re-evaluate once the columns are in.

No, I'm trying to keep this somewhat economical, so I'm building a DIY screen for about $50. I don't think it's possible to build an AT screen for that cost (but if I'm wrong, please correct me). The screen wall is about 28 inches from the back real wall, so I could always rebuild my screen wall and add an AT screen later if wanted to.

Day 4:

We had a 5 day power outage, so I just got back t work last night. I only had a few hours, so I only had time to redo the front of the stage, finish the screen wall, and build my first 2 columns.





I'm hoping to put in 6-8 hours tomorrow and the same on Sunday, so I hope to make some decent progress this weekend.

Ohio. We had residual winds from the hurricane up here. 20% of Ohio lost power. We lost it sunday early afternoon and didn't get it back until thursday.

Anyway, as usual life got in the way today, so I only got 3 hours in. I finished the stage, and built 2 more columns. all I have to do is build 2 more columns and I'm done framing. I am going to put in a riser, but I think I'm going to do it later on instead of now. I don't really want to spend money on more seating now, and I think it would look dumb to have an empty riser. I figure I can do all my cuts outside, assemble it in the room, and not have any real mess. On the other hand I could just get it done now, but that means yet another trip to Home Depot, which means borrowing a truck yet again. Decisions decisions.

Actually, Duke energy had 700,000 without electricity in the greater Cincinnati area alone. Where I am in Dayton, we had 300,000 without power.

Speaking of risers, I started mine tonight. Nothing is nailed together yet, which is why some of it looks crooked. I was getting ready to nail everything when I had to quit for the day.

The riser was constructed with 2x12s. I will be using 2x6s to put a step on the front and back of the riser, the full width of it. So when you walk into the theater room, you will step up on to the riser, then step down to go to the front row. Due to the narrowness of the room, especially the back, this was the best option, rather than trying to leave a walkway to the side. The riser will really only fit a small 2 seater couch with enough room to walk by.





I won't be able to work on it tomorrow. My plan is to stay home Tuesday from work, and complete the riser in its entirety, run speaker wire to the 2 columns that don't have any, get all the columns drywalled and the first coat of mud and tape, and then start on cleanup during the time the mud dries. Hopefully I can get a full 10-12 hour day in with no distractions. My goal is to have the room finished by the weekend of October 4th, hopefully sooner though.

So I put in a 10 hour day in the HT today, and got a lot done. I thought I would get more done, but that's always the case.

I finished my riser, fished 2 new speaker cable runs to upgrade from 5.1 to 7.1, and got all my drywall up for my columns. I wanted to get my cornerbead and first coat of mud on, but I ran out of time. I'm not sure where 10 hours wentm but oh well.

Pics:

So Friday night I put my first coat of mud and tape on. To my surprise, it is still a little wet this morning! Is that normal? It's been 38 hours. At this rate it's going to take me a week to mud just because of drying time.

I considered theater seats but decided aganst it. My riser isn't wide enough for 3 seats plus room to walk through (since you enter the room from the rear). Also, I real only need 2 rear seats because my goal was just to have enough room to have another couple over.

OK, so you meant 3 rows in total? That would be really cramped, as the room is only 20 feet long. We left the back wall open because behind it is my son's playroom, and we want to be able to hear him while he is playing, if we are watching a movie.