Saga of the "Old Vic" - Page 3

Hi Scott,

Thanks for checking up on me! Actually I have an excuse -- I've just got back from 10 days windsurfing in Venezuela ;-) I'm going to touch base with Bryan (bpape) to finalize the room dimensions and will start framing this week. I think the sub situation is resolved. I will be going with an IB design with 4x18" Fi drivers Expect a thread update soon.

Cheers.

Hi all. It's been a while since I last updated my build thread. One problem that set me back was that I wasn't happy with the level of the new concrete
floor. Unfortunately the contractor that did the excellent foundation work got sick and didn't really finish the job. The short story is that after several attempts at grinding and leveling it is finally the quality I was looking for. Whilst this was being done most of my time has been spent rewiring and re-routing existing cables. In fact this, never ending task, has been the most demoralizing job to date. Since the space started life as a crawl space my guess is that nobody wanted to do a neat job so consequently it was a spaghetti nest of wires. I'm just about done with the cleanup including a couple of the ubiquitous smurf tubes in case I've forgotten something.



I also got the water softener fitted and the wall between new machine room and theater sealed:



The next job was to seal up the existing exterior vents.



Then the waterproofing of the concrete walls. I had many ideas about how to do this, but in the end decided on a (nasty) paint on substance
used in the construction of swimming pools and exterior basement wall waterproofing. The stuff is called HLM 5000 and I've no doubt it is
going to work great but I can see why it is recommended for exterior use. Whilst curing it give off a pungent odor that's sort of a
mixture of ammonia and oil paint. It was so bad that my whole family slept in one room with an open door to a deck whilst the house HVAC
was pumping air through the house. Lesson learned -- read the label!





Here's a closeup of the coating showing the sealing of concrete voids:


You can see I also insulated the existing walls prior to the internal framing. I'm not sure this was absolutely necessary given that I'll be insulating the new inner room walls but I thought it might have a benefit in preventing rattles and isolating the room. I must be a strange person but I actually enjoyed putting up the fluffy insulation. Somehow it seems to bring the space all together.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm remodeling my adjacent garage at the same time as the theater, so whenever I get bored with one I jump to the
other. I managed to hang the remaining garage cabinets. Just need to fit handles to the doors and install the baseboard.





Oh, and I need to figure out a way to seal and trim the door from my workshop to my car garage before I create too much dust:

With the waterproofing membrane dry it's time to frame. Yeah!

First job was laying out the plating. I'm putting in a double bottom plate in anticipation for internal sub floor. That way I'll still have
room to firmly attach the bottom of the sheet rock to the sill. Here the PT plate is attached to the concrete (and well caulked) and the second
bottom plate and top plates are being cut.



Here's a closeup of quality caulking job



With the plates done, up go the walls:



Note the room-within-a-room construction:


Here is a entrance/lobby area which is a double wall construction:



Finally all those wires are starting to be centralized in what will be a full height MA rack:

Sometimes I need encouragement and a great way I've found is to compare the before and after. Here are a few. Makes me feel better anyway

From this crawlspace:
To:

And this crawlspace:
To:

And this old garage:
To:

Ok, I feel better now. Ready for more framing...

Hi Daniel, There were a number of reasons for going with the IB sub:

1. I've only heard one IB setup before, but that memory is still with me -- the tightest and lowest base I've ever experienced free of any mechanical noise or distortion. I really want to create that same trouser flapping, stomach squeezing experience.

2. I was originally under the mistaken believe that the back chamber of the IB had to literally be infinite i.e. vent to the outside other such open chamber and that went against my goal of a quality isolated space. In fact I learned that you simply need a large enough box (about 10 x Vas) to approximate to infinite and I could build this in an isolated manner just like the rest of the room.

3. Bryan (bpape) is performing his magic on the treatment design and pointed out that starting with a room whose length was exactly twice the width was problematic and why not cut a few feet off the length and build a IB enclosure.. I was immediately sold..

Thanks for the support. Framing is now complete and I should be putting up the insulation soon. Finally my wife understands what I'm trying to accomplish "in that dirt pile under the house"

Cool wife. I've given up asking mine to help -- only ends in frustration...



Cracking the whip, hey! Ok, a couple more pics tonight.

For W00lly and the couple of others following the build here are the completed framing pics. I've actually been done a few days but it's tax season It would make an interesting poll... do DIY theater builders do their own taxes?

Here is the theater entrance and equipment cabinet (located outside of theater). The theater framing is completely separate from the house:




Stepping inside the theater entrance. North and West walls are framed 16" OC the other two 24" OC; the idea being to ensure they have difference resonant frequencies. The ceiling joists sit on top of the top plates and are separated from the floor above.




View of the media library accessible from within the theater:



The room has a 'strongback' framing over the ceiling and a couple of braces. Once the temporary braces were removed the room was absolutely solid. Owing to some confusion over codes and to ensure that there was no possibility of the room distorting when I start dry walling I attached DC-04 clips. When I originally purchased these I was planning to fix them to the concrete high up on the walls, however bpape suggested that they are most effective when oriented with a shear force (rather than compressive). After some experimentation I decided they would work best mounted vertically on the ceiling joists. Given the gap I left for pipework I needed to extend some blocking up so the clips could reach the joists above:




I know a rule of thumb is to mount these every 2', but given that my room didn't really need them I ended up with them spaced about 4' apart. Somebody stop me if this is a bad idea..

Next steps:
1. There is always a few more wires to run..
2. HVAC supply/return.
3. Then, because I'm doing all the wiring internally: insulation and drywall. Yeah!

HVAC Question: given the space will end up about 26'x15'x10' what flow rate should I be aiming for (and thus duct work pipe size)?

Also, I'm intending in boxing in two of the ceiling joist bays (one supply, one return) with MDF and starting the encasement of the ductwork before it right angles down into the soffits inside the room. The idea is to be able to get sufficient bends in the duct all encased in sound deadening MDF. So the idea would be to use flex duct to the joist bay, then either continue that flex duct (which would be a tight fit) or to transition to duct board lining the inside of the MDF. This probably warrants a picture, but does anybody have any suggestions on this?

Thanks Roger, yes the position of the front row of seats is changing especially now I'm building the IB enclosure. I still haven't finalized on the exact position but they will be a couple of feet off the centerline. Right now I'm focused on getting the floor and drywalling complete then I'll get back and finalize the layout. BTW I am consulting with bpape.

Cheers.

Warning: this post is not about my Home Theater progress although it is partially responsible for the lack of progress with it ;-) I hope you will excuse the diversion.

There was some interest in earlier post about my garage/workshop remodel which I'm doing simultaneously with the theater. I think I promised BIGmouthinDC that I'd post finished pictures. So here they are.

The very last step was the building the counter tops. Here is the final piece of laminating:



After a bit of cleanup with the file:



And I'm done (my wife joked that it was better than her kitchen..... or was that a joke..


The remodel including splitting a 3 car garage into a single garage and double workshop:


To keep workshop dust out of the garage I went to a lot of trouble routing out and fitting door seals and brushes. The result was worth the effort -- absolutely no dust gets past this door when closed:


The original garage also had very high vaulted ceilings so I built a finished open loft:



The loft is great space to store my mess. I have plans to build a wood rack, and to convert the telescopic ladder into a pull down loft ladder, but that can wait until after the theater. I also built a dust proof closet in the loft:


One of the benefits of a complete remodel is that I can make use of every space. A closet under the new staircase is a perfect soundproof home for my compressor (which is also plumbed around the shop and to my mechanical room):


Before applying floor epoxy I cut and fitted some in floor outlets (both 110 and 240v):


A couple more shots. Still a couple of minor things to do like fit a extra cabinet on the wall and I really need to, after 10+ years of woodworking, build a real wood workbench:





I also wired into the house intercom so my wife has a way to shout at me... I tend to spend a lot of time in the shop You can also see the entrance to the Theater and rest of house:

Whilst the garage/workshop has kept busy I have had another major setback. On the very last day of rain this season my roof leaked quite badly and we awoke to the horrible sound of water pouring onto the floor. I was lucky to catch it shortly after the failure but it was enough to bring down three ceilings. Of course, I've remodelled exactly three rooms in the house since I purchased it and guess which three were waterlogged.... Yup

Suffice to say there have been some cleanup and drywalling going on:

.

Alright, that's the end of the diversion. I'm back on the Theater project now and promise the next update will show some progress.

The damage is under control, but I'm burned out on drywall right before I tackle the big job!


Thanks Ted. The water damage was from failure around the drain area of a flat roof section. The really frustrating thing is that I had the entire roof replaced 9 months ago and the roofer did not seal the pipes in the correct manner. A minor water backup caused failure and the puddle of water on the roof poured in.. I've since done a ton of reading on flat roofs just so I can inspect the repair. As a result of that I decided to make sure the roofer could not make a mistake and fitted new quality drains which clamp to the roof membrane. This was a hassle because I needed to cut access holes in the drywall in 4 other locations. Anyway, long story short .. the roofer completely misunderstood how the new drains were suppose to work and in the end was forced to re-roof the entire flat area at their expense. I rarely use contractors and I'm kicking myself because I know I could have done a much better job myself although I guess you don't want to get "loganed" whilst doing your own roof repair



Men and their caves... Love your theater btw.