Pimp My Garage - Page 5

She asks surprisingly few questions, and hardly ever peeks into the room in progress - probably because its a mess most of the time. She does raise an eyebrow each time I come home with another load of lumber though. And I will need to brace her for the arrival of 7 new speakers on a pallet - I suspect it would be a little harder to sneak a pallet past her than the receiver bluetooth adapter that showed up a couple days ago.


Here's an updated picture of my LP THT build. I added some external bracing.

Hi Leo, thanks for the bump

Kind of slow going here - but I *think* I might be done with the drywall dust everywhere phase - at least I hope so, sick of cleaning up and inhaling that stuff. Here's the soffit (again), ready for priming and painting the ceiling / cove, installation of rope light, installation of soffit lights, installing rest of fiberglass insulation, and fabric covering.

Front over the screen - curved:





rear - the soffit is open on the bottom to hold fiberglass for bass trapping - some in place, some still to buy. I better keep the little halogen lights well away from the fiberglass, due to flammable facing.



Behind the screen wall, with fiberglass in:



I wasn't sure on the front whether to (1) keep all the same level, (2) add a ledge, with a curve matching the curve of the front, or (3) add a more angular ledge, which is what I ended up doing. Will be covered with fabric - and a little trim piece next to that ledge.





I'm waffling on the color scheme - want to have the soffit contrast with the walls and the ceiling, with either an olive green or mocha color scheme - black ceiling / dark shade soffit / lighter shade walls? Any suggestions?

Also, how well does rope lighting light up a black ceiling? Vs. say an olive green or mocha ceiling (so I could do black soffit, and green/mocha walls, and still have a contrast there).

The sub is great fun - I'm expecting to get my new speakers in this week, which means I better get cracking on setting up a shelf behind the screen to support the LCRs at proper height, and work on columns for the side and rear surrounds.

Anyone happen to know off the top of their head what the distance from floor to eyes is for a 5'10" guy in a Berkline 13175? And the distance from the bottom of cabinet to center of tweeter on a PRO-10 / SHO-10?

Hopefully Bryan is watching to keep me honest, in case I've missed something entirely in my attempt at bass trapping within the soffit.

Thanks guys!

Here's some updates...

New speakers - CHT - 6x Pro-10, 1x SHO-10 (center) - they were returns (scratches here and there), and Chris gave me a smoking hot deal on them - thanks Chris!













Did the fan mod on my QSC power amp that drives the THT LP - huge difference, the old fan was a turbo prop:



















Painted the trims for the 3" recessed lights that are going in the soffits:



Cut the holes for the lights:





Pile of debris, and cans ready to go (tomorrow):

See an echo of your design in there? Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. :-)



Yup 12/2 - I'll prepare to air out some of the choice expletives that get me through the tough building jobs.

Soffit lights in, and filled the soffit cavities with insulation:







Testing out the rope light - trying to decide between one and two layers (one looks better I think), and placement (seems like against the inner face of the soffit, raised up about an inch gives a better diffuse effect):

Thanks so much Leo.


Thanks Spaceman! I framed them with 2x3s - easier to find straight ones than 2x2s and cheaper / lighter than 2x4s. They are 8.5" tall, and 24" deep without the light tray, which extends about another 4.5". I wasn't originally going to go that wide, but (a) it allowed me to hit a parallel stud on the long walls, which simplified hanging them; and (b) it gave room for the soffit lights output to span out enough to be useful (vs. too tight to the wall). The curved soffit above the screen wall is much deeper - 24" built first, and then added the curve addition that starts about 6" on the sides, and extends out not sure how far, maybe 18" - matches the curve of the stage.

Well...I started painting the ceiling a dark brown color from Lowes (Valspar) - unfortunately, after a coat of tinted primer, and two coats of the paint, it still isn't covered - and way more problematic, their "flat" paint isn't flat, has a bit of gloss to it, which when I add the rope light, really looks like garbage - blotchy light all over the place. Awful. I am pissed, I got my money back for the paint, and put up a couple samples of a similar color and also "Mouse Ears" from Home Depot (Behr), just to see if either of them will actually dry flat enough. Not very hopeful so far, although its not completely dry.

No way the "diffuse light" look will work the way I had planned - I'll have to shove the rope light toward the front edge of the tray and take the sharper edge on lighting on the ceiling. The position I had worked out that gave a nice diffuse effect when it was just white primer, looks terrible after the paint (blotchy light).

Thanks ctote! Let me know if you need any pointers to other build threads that are good for stealing ideas from, there are a bunch of very talented guys here that we can all learn from.


Oh yeah, I hear that - after painting, I installed the rope light, and of course there's still a bit of drywall dust lurking in the light tray, so easy to get dust on the wall/ceiling. Hopefully now that its done, I won't have to touch it anymore.


Thanks Big, I've seen those, and do like the look, but I decided to stay with something more subdued - went with Behr "Espresso Bean" - similar color to the Valspar "Journey", basically the darkest shade of brown they had - and ended up drying more flat / less sheen, so I think I'm happy. Best of all, my wife, who rarely shows any interest in the project (other than it being over, just so the spending stops / slows down), actually poked her head in and said "ooh, I like the color". A welcome change from her usual reaction to dark colors / leather / etc, which is "it looks so manly" - that's not a compliment apparently.

Made some progress over the weekend - got the ceiling paint finished (I think - it was dark when I finished, will double check with natural light to see if I overlooked anything); installed the rope light (for good hopefully); used some of the extra ceiling paint to paint the wood parts of the soffit and the false wall, in preparation for fabric covering - to keep any wood/screw heads from showing through the fabric. Next step: locate and purchase linacoustic for front wall; rigid insulation panels for soffit and superchunk absorbers.

Thanks kjlewie - I started out looking for the "Labrador" color you recommended, but ended up picking a slightly darker shade of brown at Lowes called "Journey" - it looked nice enough going on, but dried with a bit more sheen than I wanted, and as I mentioned, really gave me trouble with getting the rope lights to diffuse light properly. Maybe it was due to rather cold (for So Cal) weather when I applied it? or maybe I got a bad batch / mix? The Valspar paint seemed to work very well for you, based on the pictures, so it must have been some aberration in what I received or how I applied it, dunno. Anyway, I ended up getting a refund for it, and after a light sanding, applied a coat of an almost identical color "Espresso Bean" from Home Depot (Behr), and it seemed to dry a bit flatter, and by changing the location of the rope light within the soffit, I got a pretty good effect.

I was also concerned (perhaps anal is more like it) that the sheen would defeat having a dark ceiling to some degree (reflection from light bouncing off the screen), so I figured I'd do what I can now, with the hope of not having to repaint later.

I didn't take any pics of the initial paint, but will post some pics of the final result tonight.

Here's a picture of the painted ceiling - also used the same paint to cover the soffit wood and the screen wall framing, so no wood will show through the fabric once covered. The color is Behr "Espresso Beans" - the darkest shade of brown that I could find, looks near black in the picture (and with the lights off, yay).



Rope light with the lights off.







I had been planning on just building a cheap rack to save some money - but I read someone else's thread mentioning they got a good deal on craigslist, so I checked, and whaddya know, there was one waiting for me - $180 for a 37U Slim 5 with casters, 3 2U shelves, 8 1U vent panels, and 9 horizontal lacing bars. It was part of a huge pile of gear pulled from a mansion in Chatsworth that was being sold by an NFL player who was moving - an estimated $500K I was told, 6 racks total, saw a stack of Anthem amps and a Titan projector among the pile.

The rack is total overkill as far as what I really needed - but hey, sure has plenty of room for expansion. =) My plan is to house both my A/V gear and music gear in the single rack.



Still debating whether to just roll it into the closet, or cut a hole to poke the face into the room. The latter would make for easier access both front and back - back, since the closet is only 27" wide, rack is 19" - 8" isn't even enough to be able to rotate the rack to access the wiring. If I poked the hole, I'll have to figure out how to reroute electrical - the rack would stick through the framing shown here - note the romex running horizontally that I would have to relocate - move it above the rack and add a junction box I guess? Would the junction box need to be accessible?

Thanks guys, I need all the attaboys I can get.

Thanks tb. If I go the "poke it through the wall" approach, I will do just that - either hide it within a column, or behind a panel matching the rest of the wall coverings. Would be too close to the screen to go the smoked glass door way.

Here's my plan of the day: since I have a nice tall rack that I'm going to be using for two purposes (top: A/V gear; bottom: music gear), I'll leave a gap between those two piles of gear - maybe with a cover over the face - so I can reach through from the front to connect the rack to speaker jacks, HDMI jack, and ethernet jack. So if I need to fiddle with the wiring on the rear of the rack, I unplug all those, and then I can roll it out to work on it, and then roll it back and plug it back in. A bit of a hassle, but shouldn't be too bad.

Does anyone have good resources describing (a) best placement of components within a rack - primarily for heat dissipation (I've read the MA whitepaper, and it just makes my head hurt); and (b) "rack wiring for dummies" - what order to wire power, speakers, interconnects, how to make best use of lacing bars, etc. - to get a nice / clean looking result?

Also thinking maybe down the road I could build a removable panel to place around the rack in the closet so it looks built in (remove to roll the rack out).