I've started the "Upstairs Theater" - Page 13

I have been buying it from Fabricmate.

It curtains for me! With my recent acquisition of 25 yards of GoM and a few days of time it is now time to make curtains.





25 yards of fabric is unwieldy at best so I made a cutting fixture to hold the roll.






The fabric is unrolled over the wood cross bars. There are marks so I don't have to measure each piece.






Here is a curtain pulled out and locked into place to be cut.






We folded over the top 4 inches and sewed it in place. I made a hole fixture to mark the holes for the grommets.





Here are the holes cut. This is actually the most difficult part since both layers have to be cut perfectly for the grommets to work.






And here are the grommets snapped in.









Here are the curtains hung on their rods. They still need to be hemmed.






The curtain on the left has been hemmed, the one on the right has not been hemmed yet.

Don't worry Tony, you will have carpal tunnel from the scissors in no time flat!

I have one of those rotary razor knives; it was OK at best for cutting GoM Anchorage. I also have one of these:



I bought it to cut the carpet (which it did an excellent job) and it works OK on the fabric too. You just have to be careful to not let it pull a run in the fabric. I ended up cutting most of the curtains with a really sharp box cutter.

You guys will have to come down some time and help me set everything up.

It's nothing more that a few 2x4s screw together and cardboard in the middle. I'll take some more pics of it before I take it apart.

Well, after the long Christmas break I have gotten a few things done!




We finally hemmed the all the curtains.





I had to make a notch on the edge of the curtain that is beside the step so it would not bunch up.





I'm quiet pleased with the outcome. I still need to make the mechanized track for the curtain that will be mounted over the entry door though.

Now for the fun stuff. All along I had planed to use Berkline 086 chairs in my theater. They were narrow and would fit nicely in my narrow layout. We went to a showroom that stocked the 086 model and we were satisfied with the comfort BUT:

1) They had a few of them that had been in the showroom for a while and they looked VERY worn out.
2) They seemed to be constructed very poorly.

So we decided that even though the Berklines were priced low you get what you pay for. Back to the drawing board for seats. What I really liked were some seat made by Fortress called "Crosstown"



BUT, Fortress seats are WAY, WAY, WAY out of my price range. So there is the problem. I though about it for a while.... How is a recliner constructed? It can't be that hard to make some wooden boxes (arms), attached to wood to a recliner mechanism, and upholster some foam to the chair. I have plenty of woodworking tools and I have done some upholstery before.

So I decided to make a prototype chair just to see if it could be done. The first challenge was finding the recliner mechanism. Not just any recliner mechanism but the one that Fortress uses in their chairs. Fortress has lots of good pictures on their website and from that I was able to figure out who made and which model of recliner mechanism is in their chairs. Next up was finding out were to buy it. The manufacturer of the mechanism literally has dozens and dozens of divisions all over the country and it seems that no one from one division knows what the other one does. It took me months to find the correct part numbers and locations to purchase the entire mechanism. Now for the prototype, I wanted to keep costs down since I did not know if it would even work so I built a single chair with a manual mechanism. It just happened that my father-in-law needed a new recliner so I built it for him to his specifications. I did not take many pics of it while I was building it but here is the finished result:





There were a few minor errors in the design but overall it worked well and was comfortable.

Now it is time to start making the chairs for my theater.




I started by acquiring all the seat racks for the project since those are the most important part and if I ran into trouble getting those the entire project is off. I also decided to use power racks in my seats.





First thing to make are the arms. I started with 3/4" thick A-C grade plywood and cut it down to a rough size for the arms.




Next I laid out the arm parts on each piece of plywood.





Next I started cutting out the arm parts.





Here are all the arm parts cut out. All the curved parts had to be cut on a band saw and then sanded to their final size.





Here are the two arm side parts test fitted together.











Next we cut out all the spacer blocks for the arm parts. There are LOTS of spacer blocks.....






These are the block that the recline controls will mount into.







Here are how the upper arms are put together.





And a stack of completed upper arm frames.

Here are the frames for the lower arms.





I had to put a string on the inside of the lower arm so I could pull the recline switch wiring through after everything was upholstered.





And here is the stack of lower arms.





Next I needed to cut the notches of the stringers that will space the arms when everything is finally assembled.





Some of the lower arms have both sides cut, and some of them only have one side cut depending on were they will be mounted in the end.





Next I had to cut the hole for the cupholder in the upper arm.





The cupholder fits just fine!







The seat rack is mounted to the arms with four 1/4" lag bolts. The rack has notches so you can pre install the bolts and just drop the rack in place. I'm using 3" long lag bolts and the spacers are there to let me pad the inside of the arm without causing too much interference between the arm and the seat bottom.





Next I needed to assemble a single chair to test for function and interference. Here are a pair of arms with the stringers mounted and feet attached.





And here are the upper arms attached to the test setup.






The seat rack fits like it should.






Here is a piece of 4" thick foam on a 3/4" board over the seat rack. This will be roughly the finished height of the seat.





Here is the footrest extended.

The next step is to get the back shaped correctly. Once that is done I can make all the parts for the footrests and the seat bottom.

They are actually not that hard to make (which really surprised me).

The microfiber prototype chair with the manual recline mechanism worked out to around $225 and it is VERY heavy duty. I would be willing to say that it is sturdy enough to be used with a D-Box system. The leather and microfiber chairs with power recline that I am making for my theater should end up costing no more than $400 each depending on the grade of leather that I use.