"It's your project, design it any way you want...

To quote my wife with regards to how a window got framed/trimmed per my request-- "Why is it that anything I'm NOT involved in with this house is F#$%^& UP!" Fortunately we got it all smoothed out, and the theater room is on its way to completion

XD I think that's a pretty standard sentiment among the ladies!

When given the choice between buying a new 60" TV, and replacing our circa 1980 couch (brown/tan tweed, with several cushions missing or chewed, if you're wondering), my wife's response was...

"The couch isn't that bad, is it?"

I love my wife!!!!!!!

The Mrs. always gives me a hard time about my need and desire to build the theater in the first place. Then when friends come over "Hey come check out the theater room, it's great" or "We need to do a girls movie night, I have a HT you know" me in the background remembering that she told not to show off or start bringing the husbands down.

My wife really doesn't care - which is mostly good, so I can do it how I want to (as long as I don't show her the receipts) - and I'm sure in the end, she will enjoy it, but just can't visualize what all this is leading to / will look like when its done.

Last night I got "You can have your theater room, but when its finished... I want an in ground swimming pool."

I was thinking.... are these things ever REALLY finished? =)

My current difficulties:

Explaining the need to double the drywall cost plus add $1400 in GG. Her comment, "I'll make you some green glue!"

Her again, "We don’t need to seat 15 people in a HT, I'm not having that many kids nor do I want that many people coming over on a regular basis! Can't we just find a couch on Craigslist?"

I have an old school projector screen sitting in my basement right now. She doesn't understand why that wouldn’t work. (It's about 5' wide and 4' tall) I convinced her that was too small and then she does a little research and finds projector wall paint...

"BLACK PAINT ON THE CEILING?!?!?! YOU'VE GOT TO BE OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!"

...let’s just say I am not looking forward to having to go shopping for a stereo/speakers/projector/etc.

I am lucky that she is excited to have a theater since we do watch movies a lot, but she thinks that should consist of finishing off the basement like a normal person would and then adding a projector and some speakers. I just have to bare down and take the heat because I know in the end she will tell me that I was right, just like when we were looking for dogs and she wanted an ankle biter and now she loves our black lab, she wanted a car that would get her by and now she loves her new Murano. She is starting to understand that I know what will make her happy, but I know it will only take one mistake and I will lose all the hard work

This thread should be a sticky. "What the other half says"

First, my wife always gives me the "eye" when ever I start working downstairs. Not that I spend every second down there, but I also don't want this to be a life long project either. Secondly, she always says that I can do whatever I want for a design, but she is always commenting; "what if you put that there" or "how would it look if you did this".

Yea I loved the "The basement is yours, you can do what ever you want with the basement"

Now thats its time to start planing the HT its changed to "Why does it have to be so big? What are we going to do with this other space? I was thinking it would make a nice play room for the kids"

WTF happened to design it how I want??????

One of my personal favs is when I casually mentioned that I was going to put in fabric walls. "Oh. How are we going to hang pictures?"

Um....

My Wife is also an amazing woman. She allowed me to design and build my theater room too. But she got the master bedroom. She did give me some good pointers along the way building the theater room. She's just as excited as I am completing the theater.... I'm soooo close.

This thread should be made sticky for sure.

I have so skills in building stuff on my own. So I have to hire other folks to do all the work. Finishing the entire basement at the same time and hiring someone to do this for us is expensive. So I have spent a lot of time researching to make sure we don't make mistakes and I do get beat up that I am spending too much time on my computer.

One of the contractor suggested that we put a sleek fireplace in the middle of our 1300 sq. ft basement. I have had a lot of freedom to design the basement but the fireplace will be in the middle. This $10000 fireplace is between home theater and bar. It is not even worth it for me to do any sound isolation because the sound will escape via the fireplace. I am not sure what effect the fire place will have on the quality of audio.
I cannot paint the ceiling black because it is not going to be a dedicated theater.

Cheers.

Honestly, I have to say it felt really good to vent to others that understand what we go through.

Another thing I don't quite get is the contrast between "is it done yet???" and "you spend too much time working on it" - how do I finish it without working on it, are there some elves available that someone forgot to tell me about??

Here is my WIFE story..She has 1100 sqft to mess with...I have my one room 500sqft and its mine..I do what I want in that room..

Wow! I'm not the only one that goes through that?? My elves are on strike. They refuse to work until I get them more help.

I like how the explanation is in another language. Perhaps it should be done in French. You can make anything sound good in French (throw in a few "Oooh la la's" for good measure).

Great thread! For the basement reno, of which the HT is just a portion, my wife said the design is mine, with just two conditions:

1. Keep it open concept, i.e. don't divide the space into separate rooms. Ouch, there goes any hope of an acoustically isolated theater room! I did manage to convince her that a small utility room that contains the furnace, water heater, etc. was a virtual necessity and she also wanted a bathroom discretely tucked in a corner (the space is roughed in as a bathroom, but I have since convinced her we need it more for storage). Other than that, no walled-in rooms.

2. Don't make it ugly! That probably means don't paint everything dark, especially don't paint the ceiling in the HT portion black, among other things.

Of course, she questions most of my choices about decor. Fair enough and sometimes I do reconsider after hearing her opinion. It's her house too.

Been there, heard that. Those elves you speak of are also known as "hired hands." Sure, I'm supposed to hire someone who probably charges by the hour to help me do something I can't fully describe because I haven't yet figured out the fine details that require trying to actually do it (which is when I first see the problems that always crop up). Plans are just theories that usually crumble in the face of reality. Hope I'm making sense.

Oh my god the Black Ceiling/Dark Walls Debate™...

"It'll make the room look smaller!" "You know the room isn't ACTUALLY any smaller right?"

Posted this in my build thread but I feel it deserves to be here too....

Apparently the wife does not like I Robot... =( soooo... no I Robot theme. She suggested Lord of the Rings... I told her that someone else was doing a LoTR theme and she says "who? Someone we know" and I say... No, someone on the forums... her reply Thats the dumbest thing I've ever heard" =)

I agree with you TeamK. It's like buying the same house , same car and same color of car as your neighbor.

In the world of HT, people on this forum are like neighbors.