Sandy Cove Beachside Theater

Coming soon to the beautiful white sand beaches of Nebraska

After years of lurking here and drooling over the fruits of everybody else's labor, I've hit a point where a little expansion is necessary with a new wife (who is awesome, BTW), and a baby on the way (who BTW, will also be awesome, and perhaps named Chewbacca ), it's time for another extreme home makeover of this little one bedroom/one bathroom party shack. And so, after months of design, and many more months of fighting with The Man, we're finally good to go.

We'll be going from this


to this


New deck, new master bedroom, new master bath, new dedicated theater, new roofline, new siding, new windows, and new debt! Yeah, new debt good time for that, huh?

Obviously this isn't a DIY job. I might have the skills to do some basic remodeling, but I certainly don't have the time or tools to take on this beast.

That new addition on the right side will be the new theater room (which the wife is totally on board with… like I said, she’s awesome). Given the extent of what we’re doing, the theater will probably be a work in progress for a long time after the construction is done. Acoustic panels, lighting control, masking system… that’ll all come later… if we decide we need it at all.

The layout:


And here are the obligatory Google Sketchup renders (quickies, but more or less accurate):




Our original plan was to have some built in shelving to house my old 72” Toshiba, and drop a motorized screen down in front of it for the really big screen media (thus the really bad “shelving” in the screen wall renders for the tv). But we’re rethinking that. I’ve got a Panasonic AE3000 on its way from Projector People (thanks Sarah!), and given its specs we might go with a fixed 2.35:1 screen and use the Toshiba somewhere else… I’ll be playing with the projector in the existing living room to see how it handles the excess light. If it can handle it in there, it can handle it where it’s heading. As you can see, we’re putting in 3 windows along the back wall… with this view, there’s no way I could justify going with a totally windowless room.


More than likely those windows will be covered up and light controlled almost all of the time, but we’ll wait and see how bad the ambient light is and how well that Panny lights it up.

A little history…

If you’re here, you know why we do it, but I’ll tell ya my story anyway. It all started back in the early nineties, when a George (when we all still loved George) released the original trilogy on VHS in widescreen. WIDESCREEN! Holy crap! Star Wars! And it’s just like the theater!! Pan and scan will never be good enough again! Of course on a 25” tv and early 90s surround, it was still a little underwhelming... damn cool, but a little lacking in impact. But then I took it over to a buddy’s house… he rented a room from a guy who had an impressive setup for those days… subs in the wall, full surround (dolby pro-logic… ooooh), and an 80-something inch rear projection set. Yeah, I was hooked (before that, I’m sure I was in denial).

A year or two passed and my folks were tired of the maintenance on the family’s weekend party house. So I bought it. Worked out for everyone… I got a great price on it, it stayed in the family, and the weekend gatherings continued. Of course I removed the groovy orange carpet and 70’s décor, and did what I could to make a decent media room out of what I had to work with.

The first attempt...



Yeah, that was a bad green… I swear that wasn’t what I was gunning for.

Wire management at its finest… oh yeah.


A minor downgrade while the Pioneer was in the shop… yeah, time for a new tv… and maybe some paint and new furniture….


After a few more years, an upgrade or two and some modifications to the entertainment center, here’s where we are now…


BO!


And that’s about all I can do with what I’ve got to work with… for now.

And so it begins…

I’m still debating the name (‘cause if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, ya gotta name it… and unfortunately, that’s probably all I’ve learned ), but it’s going to have to be some variation on “Sandy Cove”, because it actually is a sandy cove, and because this was the sign that Mom and Dad had down there for many, many years. (yeah… I’m a sentimental fool)

Sandy Cove Cinema? Sandy Cove Beachside Theater? The Sandy Cove Lakeside? I dunno… any suggestions?

Here’s where it will be going up.


And from the flipside…


This side will have a street-side door and entry from the garage. The entryway will have rear access to all the equipment (behind that right door on the screen wall) as well as access behind the screen through the back of that front hall closet (depending on how I go with the dropdown or fixed screen). That entryway will open up into the kitchen and into the theater.

And finally some progress! Whoohoo! Ya know originally we were hoping to be done by the 4th of July… thanks to red tape, we’re only 6 months behind. Of course that’s meant it’s been pretty tight around here with the Mrs and I and all of her stuff stacked up with nowhere to stash it. We’ve been tripping over each other since we got married in august. Hey… maybe that’s where the baby came from…. Hmmm, I wonder if there’s any information on that process on this “internet” I’ve heard so much about.

So finally, here it is… day one, the deck comes down:





The theater will come out to about 4’-5’ from the end of the deck there on the left side.

Dang, these guys work fast (down to the where the original deck was)


Aaaaand done…






Alright, that’s all I’ve got for now. Hopefully the updates will be coming fast and furious for the next three months until it’s done. Up next, tearing up some concrete.

Any questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.

Geez, those pictures are pretty wide... anybody want them scaled down?

Thanks Old. It's a lot of work, but I am extremely lucky to have it and there's not a day goes by that I don't thank the Man above. Standing on the deck at night, checking out the stars and the lake, my brain always goes back to that last episode of Cheers where Sam is alone in the bar and says "I'm the luckiest SOB in the world."

I'm not too sentimental about most things, my family and friends are first and foremost, but that place is pretty special... it was my Dad's first love, and it was mine too.... heck when it came time for a groom's cake I couldn't come up with anything that I was really passionate enough about to do, so we went with an old-school version of the place....

(thanks to Bernie... she did an awesome job! The extended family went nuts over it!)

The votes are in... whew, wasn't looking forward to resizing.

LOL. You should see some of the neighbors' houses! When Dad first built that among the various sheds and chicken shacks, the neighbors thought he was nuts putting up something that size. These days, I've got the small one. In fact that bright yellow one in the background of the deck dismantling picture... his plan is to make that the garage when he builds the "real house" and moves down there!

What the pictures don't show is that it may be long, but it's not very wide We had a heck of a time fitting it into the sliver between setbacks that they'd let us build on.

Hey, look what the framers found while they were dismantling the deck...
...my Tonka Jeep!! That must have been buried for 30 years.

So my nephew has been kind enough to offer some last minute changes to the plans. Here's what he sends me...

Here are some of the changes that I think need to be made to the plan. I have polled focus groups and conducted random surveys therefore my findings are beyond contestation. If anyone has any thing they wish to add to these obviously crucial changes please feel free to make a request however any further changes will result in more delays beyond what it will require to have an arcitect redraw these blueprints. Don and Lori there are some things that you still have to decide on such as: the color of the water slide, the exact height of the tower (you may choose any height between 25 and 43 feet), the types of beer for the vending machine (you must keep a 70/30 split between domestics and imports), and the exact size for the huskervision. I know this is a lot to think about but you will be the ones living there.

Alright, day 2. The patio comes out... maybe. Seems the guys that built this tend to overbuild things. I knew that, but dang, that patio was thicker than the wall on a Stratcom bunker!

Here they are with the first rig trying to bust it up. Their concrete saws didn't do much more than perforate it halfway through the 15" depth of it. They about had this baby vertical trying to pry it out!


Still tryin'...


They managed to get a bigger bobcat and the supersized jackhammer attachment delivered. Between lunchtime and the time I got home from work this was all that was left of it... And yeah, it got thicker on the other end!




So now we're ready to dig the foundation under the theater.

LOL, I thought the same thing, but maybe he figures that will pay for the beer.

And ya know, I'm not so sure he's thought that through... beer goggles are bad enough, but we're gonna give 'em goggles with an increased range? And put 'em way up high on a tower? I think that might be a liability problem. Then again, he did put the hot-tub underneath it to break their fall. But still, that doesn't cure the beer makin' ugly look pretty.

Hey, it's my nephew... the budding architect (at least I assume it is). Glad ya signed up and joined in... didn't want to speak for ya. You got some mad Paint skilz there.

A zip line seems a little redundant with the waterslide, don't ya think? And an elevator, huh? Riiiiiigght. You keep changing the plan and I'm gonna have to get a velvet rope, a bouncer, and start charging a cover to help pay for this! And no, I'm not hiring you or your buddies to be a bouncer.

And really, do we need the vending machine when we have the Philco?

Not much new to report these days. Still waiting for excavation. Three days of rain last week got the diggers backed up a bit, so now they're shooting for Monday.

On the upside the projector showed up a day early. Went with the Panasonic AE3000. Since this is my first projector, I don't really have a good background or even a decent setup at the moment to give a comprehensive review. And of course with no room yet, my initial playtime involved shooting half of the picture onto an old 4:3 portable screen and half onto the walls (sure, I could've made it fit the screen, but where's the fun in that?!?), but all I have to say is.... WOW. Spend most of the time last night checking out options and running 1080p trailers off the PS3. To my eye (and taking into account the less than ideal "screen"), that baby looks really good out of the box. I'll try to get some pictures up this weekend. The big test will be how it handles the abundant light that will inevitably be thrown into the mix... that'll play into deciding whether or not to put the Toshiba behind an electric screen. We'll see.

Hmmm.... maybe the nephew is on to something... maybe we DO need suspended dancing cages.

I better keep an eye on that fridge... never seen anything like that grabbing a beer.

So much for this being a family show.

Gosh, I dunno... the last time a Husker had a Hokie over for a few laughs, we Huskers came up short... but hey, I'd hate to tarnish our rep, so sure you've got 2 seats reserved - just as soon as we have seats. And a floor. And walls. We just have to make sure mdputnam schedules that bartender for that night!

BTW... love your theater, been following if for quite a while. Very classy.

That was seriously cool. When he said they found a Tonka truck, I did a mental check and couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Then he said Jeep, and I knew instantly. No clue how it could have gotten way up in the corner where it was... I'm going to blame my nephew. I'm sure it was his fault.

Hate to think what else is under there... probably about a billion beer tabs and bottle caps.