Stevens Home Theater - The Fun Begins - Page 3

No bat was necessary Jabney. Just some blessings from the Lord along with having a little bit of cash available when good deals pop up. Funny thing is that I didn't even bother trying to negotiate them down any further. I knew what kind of deal they were and figured I was helping them out as much as they were helping me out.

"And God said, let there be light". Well, I wish I could say that we were able to get the can lights installed that quickly but it took me and a friend 5 hours to hang all six lights. This was my first experience installing cans and cutting drywall, it was cool but I had no idea how much drywall dust it would produce. Good thing I covered the equipment prior to starting. We were able to install them without having to go into the attic which was nice. We were able to use the existing power from the center of the ceiling where the ceiling fan/light junction box was installed and daisy chained the cans from it (I think that's the correct terminology for it).

I chose a black baffle with a white trim since the vents in the ceiling are white, baseboards and wall sockets are white. Lowes had an all black one but they were $30 each as opposed to $10 each.



After installing the first three, we noticed one light was about 3 inches off so we had to fix it by moving the hole over and patching the drywall by screwing a cutout piece into a piece of board in the celing, adding texture and repainting the ceiling around it. In the shot below, I still have to paint a few more coats where we goofed (middle can on the right) and install the baffle and trim in the can housing (again, probably not the correct terms but you get the idea).



I picked up a Lutron Maestro IR. It really adds a great touch to the help create the theater room atmosphere. I didn't do much research on it before hand but am very pleased with it. I'm not sure if it will allow me to set more than one preset. I know that I can set the desired brightness, and set a preset for that so that at the touch of a button, it will go from Full on, and slowly dim down to the preset dimmed position. Later when I add sconces, I might replace it with a more capable one that will allow for different scenes with multiple lights on different circuits but for now, I love it. I can finally see what I am doing in there.

I just received my rear speaker mounts from JR. http://www.jr.com/btech/pe/BTH_BT77



EDIT: The BT77's have been discontinued and have been replaced by the Pinpoint AM-40's. Looks pretty much like the same bracket as the BT77's.



My theater room isn't 100% ideal due to the double doors being in the way and the double sliding glass door on the left and the long window on the right wall (which you cannot see in the photo). Room was already built when we purchased the home so I didn't have any say so in the design of it.

I will be building riser for the back row that will hold another 3 seats. My plan is to use 2" x 10"'s and 3/4" plywood on top. So once the carpet is added, it will be close to 1" high. If you are looking towards the back wall, the right door will remain closed and the edge of the riser will extend from the far right wall to the left edge of the right door. So the back row will be slightly off center shifted to the right a few inches.

What do you think would be the more ideal position for the Klipsch RB-35's?

What about the Klipsch RS-62's?

I'm leaning towards positions 1 on both sets because I think position 2 is going to be too high. If I can figure out some sort of stand that can mount to the wall behind the curtain and extend through the curtain to secure the RS-62 to, that would be ideal so I can mount it to a more correct position. Behind the curtain is a double sliding glass door. I would need to mount something either above or to the sides of the door without obstructing the ability to open the doors when needed. Not sure how to do this. Any ideas? If I cannot do that and have to mount it above the sliding glass door, it will be close to the celing (which isn't ideal at all). I believe the RS-62 has a keyhole mounting bracket on the back side. The RB-35's do not have any mounting hardware which is why I went with the speaker mounting bracket from JR.

Below are additional diagrams of the room. (ignore placement of the RS-62's. That was an old drawing but you can see where the door is on the right side of the image. They are drawn to scale.

Room is 13' wide x 19' 4" long x 10' high

I have the RB-35's temporarily setting on a pair of barstools.

I need some advice

No thoughts?

No, it will be a 7.1 system. I have 5.1 now, still need to buy my Klipsch RS-62 side surrounds. They are wide dispersion, similar to dipole/bipole speakers.

Thanks for your advice guys. Just curious where you came up with the 90 centimeter rule. Klipsch suggests placing them 5 - 7 feet from the ground.

Also curious why both of you would suggest placing the rears higher than the side surrounds. Wouldn't it be best to try and keep them at the same height?

Yeah, that's my thought. I'll have to work on a way to mount the 62's to the side through the curtain. No takers on your 42's yet?

90 cm is 3 feet above the listening area so that would be about right when sitting down, they would be 6 - 7 feet from the ground.

I'm still waiting for my screen to come in...getting very impatient. How long does it take for Elite to send it? It's been almost a month since I ordered it through my A/V guy. He told me he checked with his supplier and they were delayed a bit for some reason or another. I just want to get it hung.

The cabinet guy is coming on the 31st to install the cabinet on the front wall. I decided to go with a black slate laminate trim instead of a cherry woodgrain. I want it to not stick out when the lights go out.

I took a quick shot of the front wall. How do you like that custom entertainment center (aka storage tub) and that huge HD TV (17" LCD). My screen has FINALLY shipped, should be in this week. Hoping to install by this weekend.

My new Klipsch RC-64 Center Channel arrived today via Fedex Freight! I probably will not hook it up until this weekend because my projection screen came in today so I will be installing it on Friday as well as running my speaker wires in the walls and mounting my RB-35's. Then on Saturday, I have a guy coming in to install the entertainment center/false wall that will conceal all of the equipment up front. So over the next few days, there will be much work going on in there and I will be moving the speakers, theater chairs and equipment out of the room so they do not have the opportunity to get damaged.

I'll be ordering the Panasonic AE-3000u projector hopefully sometime next week. Next Saturday, a friend and I will attempt to build the riser for my rear seats. I've never constructed anything in my life so it should be fun. [:P]

Here are some photos of the RC-64.

I'm getting close to having a fully functional theater room that the family can enjoy. We need to get it setup quick because we all are going blind playing the Wii on my son's 17" LCD Screen.

Jason, the more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards #2 just for that very reason. Also, I'm wondering if someone could hit their head on them in the back row once the 12" riser is installed next weekend.

kampswas, I listed the retail prices below and whether I bought got it new or used. I did pay less than retail prices though.

RF-83 Fronts - Retail price $2800/pair (new)
RC-64 Center - Retail price $1000 (new)
RB-35 Rears - $630/pair (used) bought on craigslist in mint condition
RS-62 Side - $1100/pair (still need to purchase)
Velodyne F1500 - (used) 10 year old sub, bought on craigslist

I see your theater is coming along quite nicely. Haven't read through your thread though...have you decided on your speakers yet?

I haven't decided yet....leaning towards the xpa3 or possibly xpa5. Either way, I know the benefit of having a separate amp. It's not really that I need more power because the yamaha 140 watt/ch driving my 83's is plenty to crank them to ear bleeding levels. The amp will add even more clarity, especially at lower volumes and allow for headroom during big explosions.

Got some more work done yesterday. I only had a few hours because I had promised my wife we would go out for date night. I have a friend in the A/V business that was helping me and he showed up at 2:30pm. Needless to say, we had to get busy.

We first cut our lengths for speaker wires and coax and taped them together with the 40' HDMI cable and the IR cable on one end. The coax he said was just extra in case I ever needed Component Video. Guess this would be good if I had a projector that did not have HDMI (which I won't). When cut a hole in the ceiling on the front right corner and pushed about 5 feet of these wires into the attic.



We then figured out where our speaker placement and where we wanted the speaker wires to come out of the walls that would be attached to wall plates. We drilled a diagonal hole through the wall for the side and back surrounds where the speaker wires needed to come out. We then stuck "glow rods" up through the drywall and into the attic. The "glow rods" were green flourescent flexible, yet stiff plastic rods that were about 3 - 4 feet in length. You can screw several together to make it as long as you need it. This was great for pulling wires. We stuck one glow rod through the drywall for each of the side surrounds, back surrounds and one through a hole we cut for the projector wires and mount.



Once in the attic, I climbed to about the center of the theater room. We had a long flexible rod with a small hook on the end that we used to reach and pull the cables from the corner of the room that we pushed up into the attic. This kept us from having to crawl on our belly into the corner where the trusses get very tight. We untaped the wires and fed the HDMI cable, IR remote and coax through the hole we cut for the projector. It was very easy to spot the glow rods sticking up through the insullation. We attached a speaker wire to each glow rod with electrical tape and fed it down the wall as far as we could from within the attic. Note to self: Do not pull the glow rod up into the attic too far. Once it enters the drywall, you can't get it back into the hole you cut in the wall unless you go back down and feed it back up through the original hole in the theater room. Luckily, I did it only once.



We headed back down from the attic and into the theater room. We pulled the glowrods down into the room with the speaker wire attached to it.



We measured and located studs and mounted the rear speaker brackets that I bought from JR. These have 180 degree rotation and can be angled downwards 10 degrees. These are very sturdy mounts, nice build quality.



Jason, I took your advice and mounted them up higher and further apart. They were going to be too close together if I mounted them in "position 1" of my previous diagram. I think it will work out much better that way.



Last item on the agenda was putting the screen together. The elite screen was a "snap" (pun intended) to put together. Within minutes, we had it put together. To be honest, I pulled out the measuring tape cause I wanted to make sure it was 103" diagonal and it was. It just looked smaller than I imagined. After we got it put together, my wife came in and said it was smaller than she thought it was going to be. I began to question whether I had made a mistake on the size. It's super wide at 8', just isn't very tall (under 4'). Jimmy said I was pretty much committed at this point. I figure, it's gotta be better than my current 32" CRT and my son's 17" LCD that we've been using to play the PS3 and Wii on.

I'm very pleased with the look and build of the screen. Velvet is very nice and I didn't realize the aluminum frame was going to be beveled on the inside. Bonus!



Back side closeup of the screen.


As soon as I'm finished typing, I'm going to tidy up the room and head to Lowes to pick up the material for the rear risers. Hoping to finish them this weekend. I have no idea how to do install the carpet though. That should be fun. Probably will be asking many questions. I'm using the photos of MN_hookie's risers as a basis for how to build them. Looks like it is pretty straight forward. Don't think I will install lights on the steps though. Gonna keep it simple.

I went back through and edited my post to add details that I had missed and embed the images instead of just linking to them.

I mounted the Klipsch RB-35 rear speakers to the brackets. Although the mount swivels horizontally, my speakers are so large that you cannot turn them inwards very much without the back of the speaker hitting the wall. They might swivel a little more if I did not have them angled downwards.

Now that I have them mounted, I am very glad I chose to mount them higher. With the riser being below, I'm sure someone would have banged their head on them getting up, or sitting down. Hopefully the 7 degree angle downwards will be enough. The back row will not be ideal but hopefully the side speakers will help once I purchase and install them.

Once I pick up the wallplates, I will tidy up the wires and cover the holes we made.

Here are some pics of them mounted.












I REALLY did not want to, but I decided it was best to secure the speaker with two of the three supplied screws on the bottom. They are 24 lbs each. I don't want the risk of having the speaker slip from the clamps and fall on someone's head below. I do not plan on selling them but really hated to screw into them.

I bet they do sound good as mains. They are angled downward to the full 10 degrees. I just hope they are angled down far enough.

I'm pretty stoked. Income Tax says that it should be deposited on Feb 6th which is tomorrow! If it comes in, I'll be able to order the Panasonic AE3000. I'm sooo stoked!

I have a friend that is visiting from Alabama that is going to help me tomorrow to finish building my riser, add carpet, install lights and steps. I started on it myself and this is as far as I got.



Once we finish the risers, I want to install the wall plates for the back and side surrounds.

The cabinet guy will be here on Saturday to begin constructing the custom entertainment center for the front wall. Things are moving forward. Shouldn't be too much longer till I can watch our first movie in the theater room with my family.