LongTheater is Long (and narrow): 25x11 finished room project

This is my first house. Wife and I bought it a few months before we were married, and from day 1 I envisioned this room as the "media" room - movies and gaming (xb360 & PS3).

I don't have any pictures of the space as it's a mess right now. Once I clear out the boxes from TV and stand tonight I should be able to snap some shots. The room is fully finished with an 8 ft. ceiling, 2 crappy 2-bulb light fixtures. Very deep pile carpet (nearly shag-depth but it's new stuff so don't think 60s). One spot on the wall needs to be repaired after a water problem around a window (not fully caulked, and now my cats have been peeling the paint off when they're bored) but it's otherwise completely painted. House was mid-70s construction, but we purchased it from flippers who got it at bank sale. They fixed violations and refinished it before we found it.

I do have my own rough Visio drawing of the floorplan.
Please click to embiggen, ~55KB PNG:



Here's the original Visio file. (Microsoft's free viewer is here.)

Here are a few pics, just put up 11/20 early AM. Sorry about the blurry - used my wife's camera, nearly dead battery, and it apparently wants flash on everything. Pardon the clutter too, we were using the area as a dumping ground for crap and now I have to put it all in crawlspace or other rooms.







If you want the full gallery it is here.


I am a computer guy by trade, so anything tech is generally simple for me, but I know diddly squat about construction. My brother helped me to wire my house up for coax and CAT5 for each room, but he did nothing more than act as hands as he knows less about it than I do. We haven't yet done the media room for reasons you'll see in a minute. The house is a split level, with a lower half-basement area for media room, laundry/hvac, half-bath and crawlspace under the "first floor;" a main level with LR, kitchen and dining; and upper with 3 BR and full bath. Because of the crawlspace and full upper attic access, wiring the main floor and upper floor was relatively easy. My wiring closet is in the crawlspace below the stairs, and I have access from attic all the way down to crawlspace for wiring pulls. I was a bonehead and didn't do conduit for the runs (because I was being cheap), but I did leave service loops on everything as well as run a pullstring with all of it to aid in future additions. All wall-plates are single-gang 4-spot and I have 2 CAT5 + 1 RG6QS for each plate. I have a plate in every room in the house except the dining, laundry, bathrooms, and the media room (as of this minute).

Since the top floor sits right above the lower floor, I have no access to the ceiling of the HT area without cutting, which given my lack of knowledge in drywall is something I'm afraid to do. So, we went with a 67" Samsung LED DLP for the "screen." Also, two of the walls I believe are cinder block, as they have an odd "shelf" at the top and stick out 6" into the room everywhere below ground. There are electric outlets in these walls though, so I'm not sure if there's a false wall in front allowing for wiring, or if they cut into the cinder block. Once again, I'm very hesitant to cut into drywall as I have no way to go across studs once I'm in a hole (if there are studs). I'm trying to keep the wiring restricted to things that I have vertical access to.

Here is the stuff I'm concerned about.

• TV/network wiring for this room. I believe I found a way to get CATV & CAT5 in here - there is a sewer pipe behind the lower right corner of the drawing (to the right of the TV if facing it). This is concealed by a small access trap that is in the bathroom there. This pipe goes all the way to the attic. If there's no firewall between levels I can just drop cable down here, or if there is I have a super-long auger bit that I picked up for this purpose so I hope I can get down to the "basement" level from the attic by following this pipe. My wall jack would then be on the right wall next to the TV rather than behind it, but I can tolerate a small amount of visible cable to make the run easier. I can hide it behind a speaker and put it in wire loom anyway.
  
• Seating. I'd like to do two rows of 4 but there's no way that would work, so 2 of 3 is next best. I have a roll of spare carpet from the room that I hope is enough to cover a riser I will build for the back row. I'm not sure if ~20 inches on one side of the room is enough of an aisle to get to the front seating I've seen several decent chair setups that are ~100-105" wide, and I have 125" to work with. I found the "small theater build thread" and I'm looking through there in a bit to see what people have done for narrow rooms, but it looks like a lot of these are bedrooms with a single row (and thus no concern for an aisle). To throw another loop in, I am 6'4" and 280lbs, my wife is only 5'2" and significantly lighter than me. Thus, we want chairs that are suitable for my height but aren't uncomfortable for her either.
  
• Audio. My previous setup was 5.1, Cerwin Vega HTIB setup I got cheap, along with an old JVC DTS receiver. All the receivers on the market are pushing 7.1 now, but I'm not sure if the extra 2 surrounds are worth having? Also, I have no idea how I'm going to do wiring for the surrounds. Front stage is easy, I'm putting the receiver below the TV so I can just wire direct. For 5.1 I only have to worry about sides which helps, but I don't know how to get there. Again, I'm not sure about ceiling access, and I also am not sure how to get down the inner rear wall from the attic due to the entire other floor above this room. I'm thinking the best way to do surrounds is faux crown molding to hide wires and then just drill a hole behind the molding to bring it down the wall to the speaker mount point. This works for 5.1, but with 7.1 I'm still stuck for a way to get to the middle / behind the listener without having ugly wires run across the ceiling... Unless I built a soffit or something, but I know squat about that. I could really use ideas for wire running on the rears, and I'd love to know if it is "Worth it" to do 7.1. A large volume of our media is currently just DVD (so 5.1 or maybe 6.1 source), but I have several HD-DVDs and have now started a BluRay collection, so I should be building up a 7.1 library now.

I'd greatly appreciate any advice here as I'm a n00b on much of this. I'm still trying to figure out what speakers to go with as well, but I wanted to nail down the layout (5.1 or 7.1) before I get too involved on pricing. Probably going to do an Axiom setup, possibly the Epic Grand Master 350 or 500 but still mulling it all over. ($2500+ for a 5.1 setup is more than I paid for the TV!)

This post reserved for future use (finished pictures?) (Assuming of course I can go back and edit a post several weeks later...)

DaveWolf: what are your dimensions? I don't think I saw them in your thread.

Not that this forum gets much traffic, but just to help inflate my post count () a bump as I threw some pics in the first post.

mayhem13: great advice. I actually came up with another way to do it that will require zero paint work though. If i throw up hollow / channeled crown moulding, I can use that to avoid having to go horizontally through studs or screw with the carpeting or baseboards. I have a hole in the rear right wall now (where the ethernet & CATV feed in) and I can go straight up and make a hole by the ceiling to feed surround wire into the moulding. I can then go down the side wall to the speaker point, make sure I'm between studs, and drill another pair of holes there - one by ceiling, one by mount point. Feed wire into upper hole, pull out lower hole and put a wallplate (or a phone jack, nice idea) there. Mount the speaker next to it and done. For the rears I was thinking they may end up hanging from the ceiling rather than on the back wall - I need to do some measuring and play with them if I buy (and if I go 7.1). If I hang from ceiling, I can do the same thing as the walls, but run the cable in the channel between the ceiling joists and then stick a wallplate on the ceiling by the speaker.

I don't mind visible wallplates - in a way I like them as I can show off my handiwork, and it makes it immediately visible to a future homebuyer that the room is wired for surround even if there are no speakers hanging there.

the rear door isn't a closet - it's a small breezeway to the garage. There is a small coat closet in there behind the door, but that shouldn't come into play at all.

No, the rear wall has a small vestibule / breezeway type area. There's a coat closet on one side and the door leading to the garage on the other. Three steps inside the garage up to "ground level." The left wall is the garage, above ground.

Rear door:


Inside, door to garage:


I spent most of today cleaning out & shop-vac'ing my crawlspace so I can store stuff down there... but last night my brother helped me wire an outlet for coax & ethernet. Didn't get pics during the process, but here's a shot of the hole (with a temporary faceplate on it):


I used a double-gang LV box so I can run the surround wires in the same location, I just need to get a decent wallplate that has a 4-pack of snap in jack holes and then either do screw terminals for the speaker wire or just an open hole.

Still searching for speakers at this point.

The chairs are finally decided. We will be doing two rows of 3 chairs each, seating 6. Berkline 13175s from Roman over at Rtheaters, in brown.

I need to figure out how to build a riser for the rear now. I'm mostly concerned about the height - I've been seeing btw. 8-12" in most places, my situation is critical because it's an RP TV and height changes brightness a lot. Thankfully, I already have a roll of carpet and padding that should be long enough to cover at least the front and top of one - the carpet is as wide as the room and is the same stuff already there.

Still looking for speakers. I'm stuck between AV123 who don't currently offer the exact setup I'd want but are a great price, look good and will take forever to ship, OR Axiom who can give me a decent setup but they are ugly boxes from the '80s and are pricy and don't have a sub in my range.

AV123: Rocket 850s for front and the 200/Bigfoot for center. Easy. Surround is where I'm screwed, because they don't sell their faux-dipoles any longer, and the big package special right now including a pair of 450 towers won't work for me since the room is narrow. My L/R surround MUST be wall mount, and I'd prefer dipoles.

Axiom: M60 for front, VP150 center, and QS8 surrounds. Easy and would work great, but the more I see the Rockets the more sexy they look and the more hideous the Axioms become with their square boxiness. I do like that an Axiom order would probably be here before Christmas though, while AV123 could have me on hold until February or worse.

For either setup I'm leaning to the AV123 MFW-15 sub. Relatively cheap price, but they claim to hit the subsonic stuff I'm looking for (I want to feel some bass dammit). the Axiom EP500 is intriguing, but WAYYYY out of my price range for a single sub.

I wish AV123 would pull their farking act together and (a) inform on their site the sort of shipping wait, (b) answer e-mails, (c) REMOVE stuff they have stopped producing, and (d) not scare the living shiat out of me with all of the horror stories in the forums about delays and such.

I understand this, but IME things that are being scaled up to a higher speaker layout don't sound as good as the dedicated setup. I.e. scaling 2ch up to 5.1 has never really impressed me (Pro Logic). The width of the stage is gone, the center channel carries 99% of the audio, and i generally just get pissed off at it and switch to stereo mode after a while.

Then again, Pro Logic is also a freaking ANCIENT standard, and I've never heard PL2 in a good setting so maybe it does a better job. I also don't know how well the 5.1 -> 7.1 systems (PL2x, right?) work as I've never heard these in a good setting.

Yeah, I'm now pretty much set on STARTING with a 5.1 setup. If I later feel the need to try 7.1 I can make that happen without too much effort.


True, I was mixing terms and not clear enough there. I know how PL (1) works. I admit to being totally uneducated about PL2 and modern processing though.

Interesting. Since my new receiver supports PL2 I will definitely have it on when watching stereo sources to see how it sounds. Unfortunately, I need to have speakers for this room first.

I finally pulled the trigger on speakers.

Axiom:
VP150 center
M60v2 L/R
QS8 L/R surround - may add another pair for rear surround later.

AV123:
MFW-15 subwoofer (won't arrive for another week or so)

I've been having some minor problems with the VP150 center - one of the cones is dented but seems to sound OK, and there's another cone that appears to be perfectly fine but is making a buzzing / distortion noise in game dialog (working my way through Gears of War 2 in co-op). Axiom has been great so far in dealing with issues though.

Finally, an update. I have the speakers in what I think will be final placement, and the Berklines are here as well. My cats are doing their best job of farking up the leather on the chairs already too. Wish it were humane to declaw the little biatches. It's not even purposeful "clawing," so much as "I'm sitting here, and my sister came along to surprise me so I launched off the chair to attack her and dug my claws in for the launch." *sigh*

Anyway, here are photos! Click to embiggen...





From next to the 2nd row:


Here's my 5'2" wife standing next to the DLP for scale...


From the front, one of the aforementioned devil cats is in the frame here:


Standing near the TV and shooting to the back of the room. One of two evil cats + wife are both present:


A shot of wire management behind the system. All power and ethernet cables are in the white plastic sleeves. Picked them up at WalMart (ugh) cheap (yay). They blend in with the baseboards so you don't really see the wires unless you're searching for them.


Closeup on the wallplate, which has 2x Ethernet, 1x RG6QS (CATV), and the plugs for Surround L/R and Rear L/R (for future expansion):


Sitting in the sweet spot:


I need to get crown molding to cover the surround wiring. I also need to build the riser. Riser height calculator tells me I should have at least 18.5" height on it. I'm not concerned about head clearance - the room is 8 feet tall, and I'm 6'3-6'4" and don't mind bending over slightly if I have to use the rear seats. I was going to shoot for a 19-20" riser. Problem is, this would mean I need two steps - even with a 7.5" step height. I can't find any plans on how to do this. 2x6 + 2x8 isn't tall enough, even if I do the 3-layer plywood setup on the deck (3/4 + 1/2 + 3/4). I'm not sure what height joists to use and how I can cram stairs in here... I was originally thinking of putting the stairs by the opening on the side of the room, but if I need two tiers of stairs it's going to be hard to fit them and keep the chairs centered across the room (the chair width is ~91" and the room is only 125" floor width).