Desert Sunset Theater Build - Page 16

Started work on the columns. Still have to put in a backer for the translucent panels and do some sanding.

Today I sanded the columns, applied a sanding sealer and then sanded a final coat. I also picked out a couple paint colors to try out.

Here is a couple of shots of the paint color for the walls. The color is quite a bit darker in person than in the photos.

jman - I'll take some shots of the underside of the soffit today. The light tray is made of MDF and is currently not painted but is ready for paint. My plan is to get the woodwork for the soffit painted today and as soon as that dries I'll make the cloth panels that will go on the underside. Hopefully all the soffit work will get done this week.

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Thanks for the comments. This has been a really fun project and while I'm looking forward to it being completed, I will be a little sad not to have it to work on. I don't know of a place where you can find the acronyms people use - You just pick up on those by reading. It would be a good idea to start a sticky thread on this forum with the common acronyms though - I remember being confused with stuff acronyms like GOM (Guilford of Maine Fabric) and OC703 - Owens Corning 703 rigid insulation.

About 15 years ago I had very little knowledge of this stuff. Then I started buying houses that needed work and fixed them up. My wife and I would buy a dump - move into it and spend a few years fixing it up, then sell and move into the next dump. I have a father in law that is a contractor that taught me some skills, but when it comes down to it often you just have to jump in and figure it out. Most of this stuff is not rocket science and getting good results has more to do with time and effort than skill. I've never taken a class at Lowes or Home Depot, but I'm sure it would be a good place to learn some basics. The theater construction was somewhat unconventional for the most part and this forum is priceless when it comes to theater specific construction.

I would suggest acquiring a few basic tools and diving in and learning by doing. It doesn't always require high quality tools. They can make things nicer but the job can usually be done with cheap tools. I have a really crappy table saw that hardly cuts the same twice but I'm still pretty proud of the job I did on the soffit woodwork. There were times I had to compensate with some wood filler.

Here are some shots of the soffit woodwork with a coat of primer. Hope to get these sanded and get a coat of paint on them tomorrow.

My wife is a much better painter than I am so I talked her into painting the woodwork yesterday. I'm fine with a roller but she is much better at cutting in with the brush. Not that it matters now that I already got some primer on the wall. She managed to get most of the first coat done but there is still a bit left. Once the woodwork is done, I 'll put a 3rd coat on the wall to finish up.

I also ordered a bunch of different Guilford of Maine fabric samples from Fabricmate. Not sure if I will use the fabric I showed earlier, I think it might be too busy to have that much fabric with a pattern. I did use the colors on the fabric as my color scheme though.

Blue rope light has been installed. It was very uneven when I first put it up but I faced all the LED's pointing down and it looks much more uniform.



This is what it looked like without the LED's all pointed the same way.

I just talked to AVS yesterday about the JVC RS-45. I thought about ordering it now but thought I would wait until I'm a bit closer. No sense in having it sit in the box with the warranty ticking away. I'm just going to use the zoom feature for now. I'll probably order the screen early next week. I'm going to be using the Seymour Centerstage XD screen.

As far as a completion date I'm not really sure. If I stay motivated I could be done with the theater itself in 2-3 months. Its really starting to take shape but there are still quite a few things to do. I will also have to do some work on the equipment room and still have more to deal with in the basement. To get the entire basement done I would expect that to take several months. When the theater is functional I think the work on the rest of the basement will be much slower. Fortunately the remaining unfinished part is fairly small.

I'm using the Centerstage material and will build my screen. So mainly price and availability of the DIY Fabric.

I have not decided on carpet yet, but Ive chosen paint colors and fabric already. I hope that does not limit my options too much. I really like the carpet Brad Horskotte used in his theater. Not sure if that will work with my colors though.

I'm going to try and look at some carpet this week.

Thanks for the comments. I'm pretty happy with my blue rope, but not as happy with the white. I'm thinking of trying an LED rope with the white. the white looks more washed out against the black fabric and the black part of the soffit. I may change the front of the soffit to another color to reflect the white better, but when the rope is off I think the black is best for the star ceiling.

There are a couple things I wish I would have done differently. I wish I would not have put the inserts that hold the rope light in permanently. I wish I had a way to adjust the height within the channel, then you could control the light spill better. I also wish I had used the plastic channels instead of the clips i used, I think the channels would give you more control over the position of the rope. My rope is held by clips every two feet.

I experimented in building a light diffusor in the soffit. I took a lexan plastic tube that is used to hold flourescent light bulbs and sanded it rough then cut it in half and put it over the rope light. It did not work so I worked with the positioning of the LED's and got much better results.

Here are some shots of the soffit woodwork with the first coat of paint. Some of my pics are a bit blurry.