Great Dane Cinema aka Brent's Budget Theater - Page 3

I have started work on the star ceiling panels! After hauling a pile of MDF sheets down the stairs I painted one side of each one black. This will be the side that will be covered with GOM fabric. The black paint serves two purposes. First, since GOM is a fairly open weave, it will insure that the MDF isn't visible through the fabric. Second, it will hopefully help the spray adhesive stick a bit better and not soak into the MDF.
After cutting only one of the panels to size I can say with great certainty that MDF makes a heck of a mess of fine sawdust. and that crap gets everywhere!
Doing a test fit of the panel before covering it with fabric was crucial. One side had to be almost 1 1/2 inches longer than the other to fit properly. I also left about 3/8 of an inch gap between the soffit sides and the panels to allow for some adjustment during the final installation. This gap will be hidden by GOM covered panels later.

The first piece test fit, no GOM and no fibers run yet.

Yeah, the MDF sucks to work with, but it will be worth it. The MDO stuff looks pretty interesting. Too late for this project, but I'll definitely take a look at it in the future.

Tonight's activities included using my projector to trace out the stars on one of the panels. Due to space constraints in my work area. I'll be completing each panel before moving on to the next.

The past few days have been pretty productive ones.

I pre-drilled some holes around the 3 outside perimeter edges of the panel using a countersink bit. After it was covered in fabric I cut a little slot in the GOM so it wouldnt bunch up when putting a screw through the hole. I'll run drywall screws through these into 2x2 strips attached to the ceiling. After the screws are in, it looks something like this. I expect them to virtually disappear in a dark room.


The edge that will be in the middle of the room, will have no visible screws. Instead I attached some 2x3s to the panel before covering it with fabric. These will be screwed to the joists. You can see them in the finished panel pic further down this post.

Then it was time to cover the first panel with fabric. I wasnt about to toss a $300 roll of fabric on the dusty floor of my basement, even if i swept it, it would still collect all sorts of dust. So, keeping with the most redneck solution I could come up with I have this:



A couple spare 2x3s screwed to the floor joists above, some shelf brackets turned upside down to hold a rod... thats actually an extension handle for a paint roller and.. it works great!



I didnt really know how much of the spray adhesive to use, but it seems to have worked ok. I used 3M super 77. I did a test piece too, and I could still pull the fabric off if i really wanted to, but it seems to stick well enough.



I ordered a pneumatic upholstery stapler , but its not here yet. Since I was impatient and wanted to get this thing done, I used my Ryobi electric stapler. It was a real pain. That thing jams up way too much. If your doing a job that requires this many staples. Do yourself a favor and get a pneumatic stapler.

I somehow talked my 8 year old daughter into helping me run the fibers. She was pretty proud to be such a big help on this project. I hope she doesnt change her mind on the next few panels. They will have around twice as many stars as this one! After a couple hours, we had this:



The rectangles in the middle of the panel line up with strips I screwed to the joists. I'll shoot some finishing nails through these to give the middle of the panel some support.

I experimented with hot gluing the first few fibers in place using a 'low temp' hot glue gun. But it proved to be time consuming and difficult to not damage the fibers. For the rest I just put a dot of wood glue on the base of the fiber once they were in place. It was faster, easier, and made it really easy to see with holes had fibers run to them and which didn't. After the fibers were run i taped them in place so they wouldn't move around or get pinched on the mounting strips during installation. Once this was done, the glue seemed to be pointless. I'll probably use the wood glue on the next panels anyway simply to keep track of which holes have fiber easier.

Here were testing it out. The glow of the fiber bundle looked really cool, but it was hard to capture in a picture.


And....... Finally.... the first panel is in place!


Its every bit as awesome as I hoped it would be. But the best part is that my kids actually think that I finally made something cool. When we did the first test of lighting it up, my daughter told me, "Hey dad, that's actually pretty neat." As if she didn't believe me. Ha!

I finally finished filling my stage with sand. Its all put back together. I'll probably put another layer of OSB on before I put carpet in though. Between the sand filled stage and the duct liner on the walls, the room sounds much better than it did before any treatments.

.... now back to running fibers for the star ceiling....

I was playing around in Paint.NET today and made myself a nifty backdrop /intro image.

Ha! Good point!

My dad helped me fit the third star panel into place tonight. It looks fantastic. I cant wait to get the last panel finished and in place. The 2nd and 3rd panels have a lot more stars than the first one and took significantly longer to construct. Based on my star map, i think the last one is going to take the longest. I'd estimate Ive spent around 25 - 30 hours to get to this point. Im really glad i decided to make one panel at a time. It breaks up the work nicely. I think i would have gone crazy running the fibers for all of them at once.

Its hard to take a picture of, but here are some progress pics:

yeah i think they are a bit bright too, even with the illuminators at their dimmest settings. I was really surprised how bright the stars are. I've thought about putting some tissue paper or something in the illuminators to block the LEDs a bit. It might give a more varied appearance to the star brightness too. Since its LED, heat or fire hazard shouldn't be an issue. Or I could color the ends of the fibers with a marker or something I suppose.

I got the last star panel put up tonight.... finally!

Here's a shot facing the screen wall:


Here's facing the rear of the room:


There's still a little fine tuning to do, but this is a huge milestone for me. Ive dreamed of installing a star ceiling since I got the idea to have a dedicated theater.

I've been thinking about my column design and construction. I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a while to use cabinet doors for the wood part of the construction. I think it would really speed up the construction of them and i feel that I'd have less to worry about as far as fit an finish. The panels would already be the right size, all I'd have to do is attach them to a frame. Cost wise, they might be a little more expensive, but a lot faster to build. I can get raw unfinished cabinet doors from my local Menards. Cost would be around $145 per column for the wood, which im sure is more than a typical plywood construction with trim would be, but i haven't calculated those costs yet. Does this seem to be really high? How much is reasonable to spend on column construction? Thoughts?

Here's a quick sketchup i did to give you an idea of what they might look like.

the cost of each door varies depending on its size. I priced it out based on the unfinished raised panel oak cabinet doors that Menards keeps in stock. They vary in price between 20 and 35 each door. I found an online site that sells them for under $11 per square foot and offers custom sizes. I may order a sample from them too.

yes, 4 of the columns will be hiding speakers. I need to do a mockup and see how much space I'll really be losing with the columns. My side and rear surround speakers are about 9" deep, so I was planning on 10" deep columns. My dimensions look good on paper, but in practice it might make the room feel cramped. There is a chance I'll need to change my seating plans too.

Right now Im using a set of Polk Audio Monitor Series speakers. Monitor 30's are used for the side and rear surrounds. I'm very happy with their performance considering they were fairly cheap, i think they were ~ $100 a pair. I previously had on wall Yamaha's which are about 4" deep , I could put those back into service but they have basically zero bass response. new speakers aren't really in the budget at the moment. My soffits are fairly deep too, since i had to work around existing duct work, and I'm concerned if i make the columns too shallow the proportions wont look right. I think my next step is to build some mock up columns to get an idea of proper dimensions in the room. The speakers themselves hanging on the wall don't seem like they protrude too far at least.

I've decided to to carpet shopping after work today. Menards is running some sales with fairly good prices. Im not planning to get anything too fancy. But Im struggling to decide on a color. I was looking at this:
http://menards.com/main/flooring/carpet/frieze-carpet/citation-success-frieze-carpet-12ft-wide/p-1694132-c-6541.htm Either in that color or a solid dark brown (no online pic unfortunately). I'm not sure which way to go. I was almost set on the dark brown but I think the dark brown might make the room too dark overall. the taupe sample i have has some color variation, but no pattern. and Im fine with that. The dark brown almost looks black and Im sure will look like a black hole with the lights off, But Im not sure if thats a good thing. I dont want people tripping on steps or having trouble finding their way. A bit of contrast with a slightly lighter carpet might be nice too.

Opinions?

Ok.. update time. I have reworked the masking system so that the mechanics of it are hidden behind the screen wall and in the soffit. I built a channel out of 1x4 s and a 1x6 that the panel tracks and traverse rod sit inside. I got out my sawzall and modified the soffit framing so the channel could be mounted so the bottom of it is flush with the underside of the soffit.


I changed out my makeshift wooden brackets that connect the traverse rod to the masking panels for slightly less makeshift and more robust aluminum brackets.



I also mounted the rotor assembly vertically on the wall behind the screen wall and enclosed it in a box lined with fiberglass insulation.



The result is much quieter operation and due to the cord being shorter, more accurate stopping points.


Next I started work on finishing the soffits. I framed the front soffit curve to match that of the stage. The face of it is mdf covered in black GOM. I was lucky to be able to use GOM scraps left over from the star ceiling. Unfortunately the amount left on my roll isnt long enough to finish the perimeter of the room, so I'll need to order some more. I'll need more for the walls anyway, so its not a big deal.


Before I covered the MDF in GOM, I used the soffit assembly as a jig to cut the trim piece for the bottom. I first traced it out and rough cut with my jigsaw, then used a flush trim bit on my fancy new router to get a nice smooth curve. I am very happy with the result. Eventually the curve will be transferred to a piece of oak using the same process.

Here is what the front of the room looks like now. The masking panels will need to be redone since they are too short now that the track is higher.

And now Im back to my debate about the carpet. Below are two samples Im looking at, mocked up against my wall fabric. The wood trim will be stained a darker color. The carpet is nothing fancy, but it meets my budget requirements.

The first is a thicker, more plush frieze. this one is available in a very dark brown also, but i've pretty much decided against that.



the second is more of a berber, with a pattern, but is not as plush. I think I like the color slightly better.

Well, I ended up deciding on the second carpet option from my previous post. I think it will look much better in the room to have a little bit of a pattern to it. I also decided to do the carpet installation myself and picked up a carpet stretcher.

But before I can do that I have a few pesky projects to finish first. Tonight I finished redoing my riser steps. The way they were before they were too shallow and were probably
more of a safety hazard than anything. The new reworked steps are much more usable. Plus I finally got my step lights permenently installed.





I think I'm going to put a second layer of OSB on the riser like I did with the stage too. But that means another trip to town with my dads truck so the carpet installation might be slightly delayed, especially since funds are hurting after the carpet purchase.. I can't imagine what the really nice stuff would cost, plus cost of installation if I didn't do it myself.