Great Dane Cinema aka Brent's Budget Theater - Page 5

Yeah, I've thought about it. My surround speakers are actually rear ported and sit a half inch or so off the wall when mounted. I'm not sure what mounting them in a recess would do to the acoustics. While I haven't done a lot along the lines of soundproofing, I have a feeling that cutting into the drywall wouldn't do much to help the situation either. I made some 9"x16" rectangular mockup columns out of cardboard to get an idea of how they would fit in the room, and they didnt really impose on walking space all that much. While i like the look of a substantial column, they just looked kind of big and boxy to me. I stumbled across the half-octagon design in this thread and really liked the concept. http://www.avsforum.com/t/1043952/ella-s-ht-2-0-build/60
They'll still have enough inside space to hide my speakers, but it will be a tight fit. I picked up some more supplies last night so i can put together a more formal mockup. If it turns out to be a tight squeeze I might have to recess the speakers into the wall an inch or two, but i'd rather not.

My room is pretty narrow, only about 11' 8" after treatments are on the walls. So I'm expecting that I'll need to compromise on my seating plans too. Originally I was planing on three seats in the front row, and four in the back. It looks ok on paper, but in reality doesnt leave a lot walking space, with or without the columns. I'm probably going to end up with a love seat configuration in the front just to make it easier to get to the back row. But that's still undecided. I know If i ever build another theater, I'll do whatever I can to get a few more feet of room width.

I'm probably just being stubborn, but I like the speakers I have

I worked on the trim for the edge of the soffit today. I got everything cut to length and dry fit in place. The pieces are clamped to the soffit to test the fit, but they will come back down for staining before they get permanently installed. I'm still debating on which stain to use though. At first i was planning to just miter the corners of the trim, but I ended up coping them instead and I'm glad i did. My room isn't quite square so i would have had to fudge the angles a little bit and might have taken some trial and error to get it right. Also, I didn't want any seams in the side pieces ad at just short of 16 feet it would have been pretty tough to cut a 45 degree miter at just the right spot. After coping a few practices i got fairly good at coping. My process was to cut the trim at 45. and use a pencil to highlight the resulting profile that i'd cut. I then used my coping saw to cut close to that line, and finally used my dremel with a sanding drum to finish it up . the result isn't too bad for my first time:


Here's a shot of the front of the room:


and towards the back:

This shot shows the profile of the trim used for the face of the light tray and the coped corner joint a bit better.

I'm almost done finishing all the oak for the soffit trim. I went with a red oak stain and minwax wipe on poly. I really like how its turning out so far. I have one more coat of poly to do and then hopefully get it all put up this weekend.

Thanks for the compliments. Its been a long a process to get to this point and I still have a lot of work to do, but the end is in sight! I got the trim for the soffit hung last night. Overall I am very happy with how it turned out.
Here is a close up of the finished wood. I also covered the front panel under the soffit with fabric and painted the light trim black. I really like the contrast of the black fabric against the stained wood.




My original plan was to install a rope light in the tray formed by the newly installed trim. I temporarily layed a blue rope light in the tray to get a feel for it. It looks cool in t e pictures, but in practice, I'm not sure i really like it. With the rope light off, you cant see any ceiling edges or seams in the ceiling fabric.
Lights dimmed and star ceiling:


But with the lights on, the edges are pretty visible and you lose some of the illusion of gazing up into the open sky. In person the edges are actually a bit brighter than in the below picture.

Today I started to build the panels for the underside of the soffit. I started by making a frame out of 3/4 MDF. they have a solid area where a light and the column will be. the rest has a large open area to allow sound to pass through the fabric into in the insulation in the soffit, which functions as a bass trap.


I then wrapped fabric around the edge that will be installed next to the wood trim on the soffit and stapled it to the back side. The fabric I'm using shows holes if finishing nails go through it, so i couldn't pre-wrap the entire panel. The plus side is the fabric is only $5 a yard at Joann's, has a pretty uniform stretch, easily passes the 'blow test,' and doesnt look half bad..
Next, I attached the panel to the underside of the soffit with some 2 in brad nails. you can see the fabric hanging down on the left side:


Once the panel was fastened I used a paint stir stick to stretch the fabric to the wall and staple it in place:




There is a visible line of staples about 1/2 from the wall, but they will be covered by the wall panels.
Next, I cut out the fabric and installed the low voltage recessed puck light. I was limited to this style of light due to limited clearance inside the soffit.


And as I expected, there are visible stapled around the light too.. I expected that i would need to find some sort of trim ring to pretty it up and everything i can find is about $10 per light for a simple metal or plastic ring. So, i took one of those slider pads that you use to move furniture. Pack of 4, less than five bucks.


I cut a round hole in the middle and I have this:

.....Obviously it will be painted black.

Now.. off to work on the rest of the panels....
Edited by meyer64 - 2/16/13 at 3:31pm

I finally started work on constructing my columns! I've had the wood sitting in my basement for months now, just waiting until I could hijack a table saw to make the angled rip cuts. My brother loaned me his Bosch portable table saw for the week, so I'm rushing to get everything cut and assembled now. They are solid oak and have just enough room inside to hide my side and rear surround speakers, but only with about 1/4 inch clearance.

Here are some pics of the construction, and one sitting in its future home once they are stained. The open area will be covered with a removable cover using the same black fabric as the underside of the soffits.

internal structure:


dry fit, showing approximate speaker location:


first one assembled and temporarily set in place:


I have 2 columns put together, 4 more to go.....

I now have all 6 columns built! I have been worrying about building these things for a long time but I'm very happy with how they turned out. I still need to stain them and make the grilles though.
Here they are positioned in the theater. Ignore my old couches, they will be replaced once the theater is finished.





Here how they look over the step. I still have a tiny bit of carpet work to finish up that I was waiting on until the columns were in.


Once they are installed, I'll trim the top to cover the slight gap between the column and the soffit. I got a good deal on some trim at Menards, 6 feet for $2 so I picked up a few pieces, I might go back and get something more substantial though since this stuff is a bit small.

I got the rest of the fixed panels put in on the underside of the soffit. The remaining spaces will have removable panels that are still yet to be built. That way I still have access to the wiring in the soffit and it makes it easier to pull more cable in the future if i need to.

I got the first of the fabric panels up on the wall too. They really don't take all that long to make so hopefully I'll have most of them up by the end of the week. I finally feel like like I'm on the home stretch!

The fabric is more of a green than it looks in this pic.

It looks like we have a similar stage design too!

Last night I got 4 more of the fabric panels on the wall. I'm hoping to finish the rest of the green upper panels tonight. The room is really starting to look nice! I'll try to take some pictures to document the construction of the panels.

My itch for a new screen finally got to me today and I ordered some Centerstage XD fabric from SeymourAV. Up until this point I've been using my projector on a very much ghetto rigged piece of blackout cloth. The Centerstage material should be a huge upgrade in terms of both image quality as well as allowing the sound from my speakers to pass directly through it. And i can finally get my screen wall built properly instead of the temporary setup I've been using.

I got the rest of the green fabric panels put together last night, except for the one that goes around the door. I'm waiting on that one since I might change out the door.

To make the frames for the panels, I used two layers of OSB with lap joints for the corners. Nothing fancy here. Just cheap and easy. My friends at Home Depot were even nice enough to cut the OSB into 2.5" strips for me. The two layers are glued and nailed together forming a frame just slightly over 1" thick. They are fairly sturdy and I should never have an issue with them warping.




The fabric is then stretched and stapled in place. A pneumatic stapler is essential for this job.


and we tidy up the corners a bit.


the panels in the rear of the room have duct liner inserts for acoustical treatment.


And after a few hours and a bazillion staples we have this:




Each panel is held in place by a small amount of industrial strength velcro in each corner. It doesn't take too much either, just a little 2" strip holds them just fine. This way I can remove them easily if I ever need to for whatever reason.

Thanks guys. Its a great feeling to see this dream of mine coming together. Its been a long but very fulfilling project and I've learned a lot along the way.

Now I just need to get a big enough space cleaned up so I can get the columns stained.

8' ceiling minus a few inches for the fiber optic star field. With the lights off and the stars on it actually feels pretty open. The only place it feels low is the soffits when you're standing on the rear riser. I'm 6'1 and if I'm not careful I can bump my head on the side of the soffit when I'm on the riser . For the most part the kids sit in the back row, so its not too big of a problem. I would have liked to make the soffit a bit smaller but I had ductwork and giant steel beam I had to work around.