The UN-Theater Build

This is the twisted, convoluted tale of the Un-Theater Build, the humble little home theater/media room build with much to be humble about. Why call it the Un-Theater?

Simple. Because the entire bloody *@%$# basement renovation project, of which the home theater is but a part, was UNexpected, UNanticipated and UNplanned, as I will explain in detail below for those foolish enough to read on. And of course, it is - and will for some time to come - still decidedly UNfinished! So calling it the UN-Theater seems only fitting!

Full disclosure: I'm totally clueless on this whole building & HT thing. It will take a tremendous amount of luck and help (hint, hint, grovel, grovel) - given my almost non-existent building skills - in order to one day defy all known laws of nature and somehow end up with something remotely resembling an actual home theater, forget about even approaching the same zip code as so many of the amazing home theaters I've seen here. Especially since of necessity the entire basement will be the first priority in this build, not the HT room. The HT is just sort of my consolation or bonus room, as it were.

So lower your expectations, all ye that enter here, and be gentle with me. And please - I encourage those with more experience in HT and construction (and that would include virtually everyone reading these words) to weigh in with helpful suggestions, tips, insults, barbs and/or general ribbing.

But I've gotten ahead of myself. Again. << sigh >> Either that or I'm so far behind that I am lapping myself again, who knows? Life in the fast lane can be so confusing sometimes! But I digress.

For those poor demented souls actually interested in hearing the strange tale of how this unexpected un-theater un-build came to force itself onto me, against my will and better judgment, I'll share the sorted details in the post that follows. For now, recognizing that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll give you a hint in the form of a photo, with the actual explanation waiting patiently for you in the post below.



For those sane and busy types, though, I'll first dive right into the floor plan and other facts, with an intentional focus on the HT room.

The Facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts ...

This is another basement theater build, in a 65(ish) year old house (the relevance of which will soon become apparent) with cinder block walls and one section (roughly one third in size) paneled with knotty pine and used as a rec room, and the remaining 2/3rds being unfinished but used in various typical yet mysterious basementy ways (laundry, utilities & workroom area as well as the obligatory wayward teenager's bedroom/hang out area). Here's the basic floorplan (did I mention I'm also learning how to use the floorplan software?)



The basic family room / HT room / media room dimensions are roughly 14.5' x 25' with a ceiling height of just under 7.5', although this height is reduced in several places by #*%@* ductwork. The room is mostly enclosed but is open to the adjacent stairway leading upstairs. Although the HT room is located in the middle of the basement, I can't easily expand into the adjacent areas because of (1) a stairway to one side and (2) a concrete bearing wall (with a fireplace) to the other. The remaining walls are exterior walls in this walk out basement. One of these walls (the western wall, facing the front of the house) has only as small window, while the opposite wall has several full size windows. Besides the stairway there are or will be 3 other doors leading off the HT: one to the back door, one to the bathroom & back section, and one to a home office.

Here's a couple of Sketch Up type views (to use the proper technical term in my parallel universe), with a focus on the un-theater room.

The Plan

The "plan" (and I use that word very lightly) is to finish the entire basement, converting the existing old knotty pine rec room to a nice mixed use family room / HT / media room area while elsewhere adding a new 3/4 bath, laundry room, bedroom and big kids 'hang out' room, and redoing my office. Plus adding the Taj Mahal.

Just kidding. I'm not planning on adding a hang out room. My wife is planning that part, and the kids. Or was that an arts and crafts room? Or a guest room? Hard to keep track, but there will be plenty of time for that detailed aspect of the "plan" later, for those interested (or bored) enough to get that far. But for now, back to the facts lest I lose you.

The plan for the media room/theater area is pretty straight forward: to add a pull down screen from the ceiling near the western wall (or Wailing Wall, for those keeping track of those sorts of things), with a projector hanging from the ceiling roughly 15' back. I still have yet to determine exactly how big a screen (other than pretty much as big as I can reasonably get it, somewhere in the 100" - 120" range hopefully) or exactly which projector, but with my carpentry abilities (or lack thereof) trust me I have plenty of time before I have to worry about those details. I'm talking Logan worthy build timeframe, if you catch my drift. Many moons to go before we sleep, Kimosabe!

Since it will be an open, mixed use family room / media room instead of a dedicated theater, I will not be messing with many of the impressive details found in so many of the dedicated HT build threads, such as risers, stages, or aggressive sound proofing strategies such as DD/GG, ceiling clips and hatracks and other cool sounding but incomprehensible things. Instead, I'm aiming for a comfortable, cozy kind of family room feel along the lines of Landshark's great HT, but customized for our needs. I also got a number of ideas from some of the other great build threads here that I hope to selectively appropriate and shamelessly adopt as if they sprang from my own ingenious but inadequate imagination. (Royalty checks to follow in the proverbial mail!)

Truth is with my appalling lack of handyman experience I have absolutely no business thinking about doing this project mostly on my own, much less actually embarking on it. But if I were to let mere lack of skill or ability deter me I would never try anything! To wit:



Plus I didn't have much of a budget to work with for the HT, after what led up to this build, so from here on in it's pretty much DIY (with help) or nothing. You know, the whole necessity is the mother of invention thing. Welcome to my world! Buckle your seat belts, put away your tray tables and return your seats to their upright position. We are about to take off!

For some months now I have lurked and read with interest and admiration bordering on disbelief the tales of so many others and their DIY journey to home theater-dome. Being of sound mind and ... well being of sound mind I decided to begin and toil on my build in blissful anonymity without starting a build thread, so as to not call any attention to and embarrass myself (outside of my immediate family and friends).

Thus was I content to be and ever remain, until recent abuse from my new and very large virtual friend bwcafishing (who even though he is 6' 5" is still renovating an entire house, for crying out load!) and RPhDrew's recent surgery, which led to him having the time to start calling people out by name and abusing them on their inactive or non-existent build threads (see the Loganator's thread).

Still, with the writing on the wall writ ever larger and louder, so grew my realization that I'm going to catch well deserved crap one way or t'other (and probably even get "Loganed" if I didn't watch out), so I figured what the hell ... I might as well just go ahead with throw a build thread up here as if I was actually capable of undertaking and completing a build, just like Logan has.

After all, what's the worst thing that can happen to me? People everywhere find out I'm either too incompetent or lazy (or both) to finish the sucker. I'm used to that (did I mention I have 3 kids and a wife?) So here I am. Like I have a choice!



That's it for the facts, gents, as best I can relate them with my tenuous grasp of reality. Next I'll share some photos, but first - for reasons that shall become painfully obvious to those who bother to read it - I have to face the fire and explain how this how whole strange project came to be, against my will. Otherwise you'll look at the photos alone and demand, like Desi Arnaz used to do, "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!!"

And this project definitely takes some 'splainin' !

First, some before photos of the basement pre-project, to give you some perspective (and laughs). If you are actually here looking for the promised explanation, you're proof positive that you can fool some of the people some of the time!

Actually, I figured that unless I humor the mindless hoards with an immediate fix of floorplan & photos no one will stick around long enough to sample the real meal that awaits right around the corner for those intrepid souls persistent enough to persevere through my BS. So, without further ado, here are some before photos.

Old rec room. These weren't entirely pre-project, as the old acoustic tile ceiling has already been demo'ed. That was very satisfying. For me. For the wife, it was shocking, as I gave her my typical advance notice of attack ... none. What can I say - it was calling out to me to destroy it without delay!



Old rec room, featuring our totally awesome, state-of-the-art 24" TV & VCR (note the complete absence of any DVD player, which is rumored to be just a fad. And don't even get me started on the BluRay thing!).

Also, please don't ask where our 8 track tape player is, or I may have to get rough with you.

I choose to focus on the positive in this set up: the bar is very low moving forward in order to achieve the "wow" factor with just about any improvement we make (including taking a baseball bat to the entire setup).



Rec room, looking towards my office in corner (behind the bookshelf).



Old Rec Room, looking past my always-computer-playing daughter towards stairs and laundry room beyond.



Entering the old rec room / future HT room (dig that happenin' shuffle board tile floor!!) Note the obvious signs of water damage on the floor near the wall also, and be thankful for what you've got.



The Western (or Wailing) Wall (future screen wall)



Old Teen Bedroom / Future Teen Hang Out Room complete with obligatory rad wall posters



Corner of same room, with a view of some of our lovely moisture problems



Once and future laundry room



And a different view of the laundry room, showing yet more evidence of the mold and moisture seepage



Former storage area, future site of the best little sauna this side of Helsinki. This will be Sauna 2.0 for me, although 1.0 was in a different house, long ago and far away.




Now, at last, time for some 'splainin'!!

Once upon a time there was a small family living in an older home with a typical basement for tropical Northland - COLD, with unfinished cinder block walls except for about one third of the area in the middle that was finished probably 40 years ago with the knotty pine paneling so typical, at least in this area. Uninsulated except for 60 year old tar paper (what were they thinking?!), it was all but unusable in the dead of winter (all 8 months of it) without using blankets and/or space heaters and/or the fireplace, despite the room having adequate heat supplies from the furnace. But at least it was blissfully cool in the sweltering hot, humid dog days of summer (both weeks of it)!

This small family was content to use this rec room for kid rough-housing, toy playing, mess making, and TV/movie watching, reveling in the state of the art, 14 year old 24" Panasonic TV which boasted (wait for it, you poor pathetic suckers) real honest to goodness TECHNICOLOR!!! Ya, babay - you heard me right! COLOR!! Groovy, baby!!



Let me tell you, few entertainment experiences compare to watching movies on a 24" screen from 14' away - it makes you feel like you are actually right there, in the very same room with the TV!!



And theoretically also whatever might be happening on the TV, if you the rare event you actually see it. And when you pair that visual extravaganza with the unparalleled sound quality emitting from the top of the line speaker (singular) that said TV boasted ... well I think it best to leave it to the reader's imagination the sensory overload that ensued, lest it become too much to bear. Words fail me, fortunately.

Crazy as it might sound, we seriously considered actually <<i>gasp!!> upgrading the room and it's equipment, but between trivialities like braces, tuition, doctors and groceries we concluded that what we had was hard to beat, all things considered (especially money).

Then fate intervened. Really. Here's proof.



We discovered (and when I say 'we' I mean it in the marital "royal we" sense, i.e. the wife) that a significant cause of the ongoing allergies and congestion that my wife and son were suffering from was the mold on our basement walls and even in the framing in the walls behind the shower in the upstairs bathroom!! Part of this was the result of slow drips in the original 60+ year old plumbing, while part was from the moisture leeching into and through the walls over the same period.

Before we knew it we were in full-bore demolition and professional mold remediation. For those who haven't had that pleasure, I'll just say it involves lots of guys in astronaut-type moon suits, fans, vents, soda blasting, demolition and money. And not necessarily in that order.





And when these astro-mold-nauts were finished with their work, they leave behind a house blissfully free of mold but also half torn apart!

That's when it hit me, and - grasping at straws - I finally saw the silver lining in this tsunami: since we had to rebuild anyway, why not seize the opportunity to do it right and include a HT!?! How tough could that be, or how much more could it cost?! (He asked naively!). No guts no glory!



Thus was an entire basement renovation and home theater project thrust upon your humble servant, unbidden and unexpected. But you know the old adage: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or in my case, slice them up and add them to your gin and tonic!

This all began last summer - June 2008 to be exact. Next I'll (finally!) share some photos of the process.

June 2008

Once we realized we had to deal with really getting rid of some serious mold in this old house we bought a few years earlier, we brought in the pros, and they went to work over the course of about a month.

The dumpster arrives, heralding the start of something big.


Next came the people who took big gobs of our money, but did a good job.


And the long process of preparing and containing the work area began
...


The mold guys make a huge mess, but they really take their time to set up the containment barriers and fans and such to contain and properly exhaust the air so the displaced mold spores don't simply find another spot in the house to land and become active again. Those mold spores have a lot in common with teenagers, only smaller and quieter.



Take a last look at the paneling on the Wailing Wall, which will have to go in order to get access to the moldy cinder block behind it. That window - actually the window well - was also a factor in this, as it was clearly the source for water occasionally getting into the basement during big rain storms. Going to need to correct the source there too.

Thanks big fella. I guess that assimilation process wasn't so bad after all, although this project has already taken on a life of it's own so who knows when - or if - it will ever end!?!

It's a lot easier to start something than it is to finish it. But the whole malted beverage thing sounds good, so long as it's not tied to my actually completing this build!

No luck on the insurance. Seems most homeowners insurance policies have entire teams of lawyers who astutely drafted exceptions covering claims relating to mold, especially when it doesn't progress to the point where the mold monster takes on gargantuan proportions and takes over your home, like this guy.



Still, I ought to come out ahead financially with reduced doctors bills in the future if this alleviates some of the chronic symptoms that my wife and son have been dealing with. I never realized that some people can be very sensitive or even allergic to mold, while others - like myself - don't seem to be bothered by it.

Or maybe beer acts as immunization against mold?

Of course, before we could actually begin this project we had to deal with the inevitable domino effects of temporarily converting space used everyday by a family to an unusable construction zone.

First we had to relocate as much of the crap, er I mean treasures, that accumulate over the course of some years, especially in unfinished basements and storage areas. Most of it found it's way to the garage, which seems like a lot of prime space to waste on mere automobiles.



If we were only dealing with the basement that would have been the end of it, but of course that would be too easy. Because we also had to simultaneously demo the bathroom on the first floor - otherwise known as our primary family bathroom - in order to open up the walls to get at the mold that formed behind the shower walls because of old plumbing.

I'll save those photos of the bathroom portion of the project for a bit later, as well as the photos of the second floor bath shower addition, which was yet another unplanned aspect of this un-project that we had to rush through when it became apparent that rehabbing the main bathroom would leave us without a working shower for many weeks!

For those of you keeping score at home that would make 3 bathrooms (out of a total of 3) being either completed gutted and rebuilt or renovated in this "home theater" project.

Is it just me or does anyone else hear the loud sound of dominoes falling?



What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah - home theaters!

As is probably becoming all too clear, much work has yet to be done before I can even begin to contemplate the pleasantries of home theaters, except vicariously by reading here about your guys' HTs.

But at least I haven't been Loganed (yet), so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

OK, so once mold dudes had removed the various superfluous parts (like walls and showers and infested framing) they transformed into astro-mold-nauts and began getting rid of the mold in earnest. They wore get-ups pretty much like real astronauts, but since I couldn't get into the quarantine area to take any pictures of them in uniform, this will have to suffice for giving you an idea of what they looked like:



A key part of the process is making sure the disturbed mold spores do not become airborne and migrate to other spots in the house, where they can lie dormant for years until the right conditions reappear (perhaps some really hot female mold spores in mini-skirts suddenly appear to entice them from their couches?) and then once again they step out and strut their stuff.

So in addition to the containment barriers pictured earlier they also had an elaborate exhaust/ventilation system exiting the house and going to our back yard, precariously close to our kids' playset. Somehow they seem to have survived that, so I guess we still can't retire just yet.

I think that pink haze in the first photo must be one of the mold monsters being caught on film while trying to escape the mold-busters protoplasm storage containment device!

The process involved essentially sandblasting the infected walls, but instead of sand they used baking powder of some sort. Don't ask me to explain the science behind it. I just pay for it, while harboring suspicions that those guys turn on their loud blasting machines and exhaust fans while they sit behind their quarantine barriers laughing and drinking beer while watching a football game on a portable TV they snuck onto the job site.

Whatever. All I know is this is what it looked like inside, at the end of (I believe) the third or so day of attacking the mold.

First the Wailing Wall in the old rec room.


The bathroom area, with the door at left leading back into the rec room.


The laundry room area, looking towards the door to the rec room.


Looking into the laundry room from the door to the rec room.


More of the laundry room. This photo shows the baking soda residue on the floor and the walls showing where they blasted bare as opposed to the original painted portion of the wall higher up.


And a shot of the exhaust hose vented to the outside.


Here's the bathroom & (future) sauna area. You can also see the exhaust hose on the right leading to the window outside.

Yeah, I got both the points you raised on your thread covered - the SSS and the baldness part of the Napoleon complex. Although at 6' tall myself my Napoleon Complex only kicks in around those who are at least 6' 4" or taller, and/or those who look like a Sasquatch like you.

Now that we had finally gotten rid of the mold and the astronaut suits, the next phase was to attack the original causes of the mold to make sure we could better manage that moisture in the future.

So we had drain tile and a sump pump installed along the perimeter of the below grade walls.

Here's a shot of the front facing wall after the soda blasting was cleaned up but before they started excavating the trench for the drain tile.



Here you can see the portion of the floor that has been jack-hammered apart, but with the concrete still in place.







I can say from experience that it is much easier to be the one watching that process than the one doing it!

While all this blasting was going on, things were a bit loud around the old homestead, or so I was told by my wife and daughters. I was seldom there for quite a while as right around this exact time - when things were so slow at home - I changed firms. That move, at least, had been in the planning stages for quite some time, unlike this entire project, so it was on with the show!

Good thing sleep is overrated!

Plus, I figured if the new gig didn't work out as anticipated we could always escape the project all together and downsize to one of these nice condos I saw advertised recently:

Now there's an idea dc! Where the hell were you when I could have used your advice?!

Easy for you to say - you have half the neighborhood working for you for free beer!

As the month drew to an end so did the last stages of the mold remediation part of the project. The next step in the process was digging out the trench where the drain tile was going to be installed.



Here's a view looking down the length of the west (below grade) wall, from the laundry room looking through the rec room to the bathroom area beyond.



Here's the sump pump pit going in in the bathroom / sauna area.

Better leave your Sasquatch costume in the car next time.

Great progress on your build! I'm overwhelmed enough with my basement and bathrooms to even contemplate an entire house!

Next up in this saga we have the installation of the drain tile. Observant readers (which would exclude YOU - yeah, I'm talkin' to YOU!) will also notice the special vapor barrier than tucks right into the drain tile system. The rest of you un-astute readers will be totally oblivious, as always.





And the sump pit area as well.



Here's a shot showing just some of the pails of rocks that were used to fill the drain tile pit. All of this had to be hauled back around the house and into the basement. It really broke me up watching those strapping young lads busting their, um, backs hauling those suckers while I sliced up some of those lemons I had been dealt and made myself another gin & tonic.

Those of you who actually read this far - unlike those picture book readers who are only skimming for pretty photos - may remember that I said in an earlier post that we were going to need to deal with the issue of water coming into through the window in the rec room during occasional bad storms. Besides some landscaping and gutter improvements, this now involved replacing two old windows and installing drainage systems into the window wells themselves, so that even if the exterior improvements failed (a topic with which I am overly familiar) we have a back up system to hopefully keep things under control.

I just wish they offered a similar product for when I screwed up, but they told me that was impossible.

Wise asses. My kinda guys.

First it's out with the old window, and digging the window well lower so that we could install the drain system.




The windows sitting on the front lawn.




In with the new window ..




Looking down into the window well at the pvc drainage system, which as you can see empties through a connector piece through the wall ...




... and into the inside, where the system is carefully designed so that I then scream like a banshee and then find and kill the people who installed the system!

Either that, or it is designed so that the water will flow into the pvc, and through the wall in the pvc connector pipe shown below from the inside ...




... and is then routed into a channel which runs straight down to the drain tile in the floor (somehow missed getting a photo of that so you voyeurs are S.O.L.), and then onwards to the sump pump and out of the blasted house, back into nature as God intended it!!

We did this on both the windows with window wells. That oughta show those slimey windows who's boss around here!!

Finally, here's a view of the window well with the rocks in, and only the caulking and finishing work to be done.

Then it was time for me and my posse to go out out on the town and howl at the moon ...

Thanks, Gary. If it turns out anything even close to your HT I'd be very happy. But word on the street is that the smart money is betting against me! I think that might be mostly my wife taking some of that action that is driving the odds away from me!

By the way, Gary, did you ever figure out that HT Media Sever PC you were going to build at some point?

OK, I feel like I durn well better pause from all the mold remediation stuff to introduce a smidgen of talk about ... <<gasp!>> HT stuff!

Because of the way this project started - bass ackwards with no warning - I was caught completely unprepared for this public exposure and yet managed to start with the following totally awesome HT set up:

• 24" SD TV, 14 years old (Panasonic if that matters a whit)
• Almost new (10 year old) VCR of some brand, don't know or care which (does it matter??)
• Period. That's it.
• There is no more - why are you looking here.
• I'm serious. Just an old TV and VCR.
• Nope. Not even a flippin' DVD player. Had a $20 one that - incredibly - broke.
• And don't make me laugh by asking about any sort of video system. WTH would I do with a video system?!

I can almost hear the collective sighs of deep rooted envy emanating from across the interweb, or "information superhighway" as we tech heads like to say. Your equipment envy is completely understandable. Who could blame you?

Still, incredibly!, despite this state-of-the-art HT set up, I am not satisfied. Being the early adopter, cutting-edge techno-geek that I am, I crave the latest and the greatest, just like everyone.

In particular, I was thinking how cool it would be to be the first one of my friends to get a DVD player, and maybe even a remote control!!

Eat your hearts out, riff-raff! Mwuha-ha-ha-hahahahahaaaaa!!!