ccotenj finally gets a projector... :)

finally crossed a long term item off the bucket list... so it's time to convert my media room into a more projector friendly environment, while still maintaining maf (me acceptance factor)... this won't be a dedicated room, i live in here for the most part, and i'm not a big fan of living in the dark...

hopefully it won't take forever... any and all comments/suggestions are welcome... i'm pretty much starting from scratch, and can do anything that i want in here...

to start, here's what i've got for "stuff"...

- pj: vivitek h5080
- screen: have a black diamond on order (106" 16X9). currently using a da-lite manual to tide me over until the bd gets here.
- audio: salk speakers (ht2-tl's, htc, custom ht1 on-walls), dual seaton submersives...
- electronics: depends on the day...
- room: white, white, white. this will change as the project moves on... i also have white traps, which i'm planning on re-covering with darker gom...

here's what it looked like in here before the project started...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:43am

so far, i've gotten phase 1 done, which is mount the projector on a shelf, and hang the screen so i have something to watch it on...

obviously far from ideal...



walls are far from flat, so i made myself flat mounting points... plus i couldn't hit a stud on both sides...



screen hanger...



screen rolled up...



screen rolled down...



high tech projector shelf...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:40am

so i'm now at the point where i can use the pj, which completes phase 1... the temptation to stop after phase 1 is strong...

next steps at this point are:

- wait for screen to get here... hopefully that will arrive within 2 weeks...

- order some dark colored GOM to re-cover the bass traps with...

- decide what to do with the screen wall. paint or fabric? ideas welcome here...

- decide what to do with the side walls...

- move a/v rack to a more better location...

- make velveteen covers for speakers...

as noted in the first post... any and all ideas/critiques/etc. are welcome...

^^^

thanks mark...

house is a turn of the century (last century ) building... brick... two stories (my room is on the 2nd floor)... no load bearing walls at all, the house is supported by HUGE beams that run between the two long walls (wood must have been cheap in those days)...

yea, i'm a bit concerned about that... i used lag screws and screwed it directly to the wall studs... remains to be seen what will happen when the submersives really fire... they certainly make other things shake... one thing is for sure... it won't fall down... i gave it my usual "hang all my weight off it test", and it didn't go anywhere...

gonna do something more "permanent" with that in the long run... i really should ceiling mount it... i'll need about a 4 foot drop if i go that direction, as the pj "wants" to be pretty much in the middle of the room, heightwise...

i guess i should man-up and do the mount and get it over with...

^^^

will do... got the kuro off the wall yesterday and moved the screen so it hangs on the wall rather than the hangers... went to joann and bought myself 10 yards of black felt to cover the front wall with as an experiment... going to try to get that up tonight when i get home from the office...

lol... yea, i've already been down that path... run a test tone through the sub, see what rattles/shakes... add foam/whatever, remove rattle... lather, rinse, repeat... took awhile, but i'm reasonably "shake/rattle" free in this room... other places in the house, not so much...

not real sure on that... a couple of guys have told me they fabricate their own drop poles on site, etc.

trying to figure out which mount system to use right now... as with previous mounts i've bought for other stuff, it seems to come down to either peerless or chief... anyone who would like to chime in with their opinions is welcome to do so... i was considering using a short throw wall mount (the chief one looks pretty solid from the pics) as it would be a LOT easier, but the "shake" consideration might come in there... have to put on some real "boom boom boom" stuff and see what kind of shake i get from my homemade shelf...

with the ceiling mount, i'm going to need about a 4 foot drop... ideal pj location is about 5 feet off the floor... the ceiling joists are 4X12's, so it should be plenty solid... i'm going to have to use wiremold to get power to it, as the only other conceivable way to do that would be to tap into my ceiling fan, and that's switched...

few more pics to come later today...

^^^

thanks for the input on that... that's good to hear... what mount did you use for it? that would actually work out quite well for me...

i gave it a bit of test when i got home today, and the projector didn't seem to move... so i think i'm on there pretty solid, at least right now...

i made some progress today...

primed the baseboard...



first coat of mouse ears...



primed wall... note to self: prime wall BEFORE putting first coat of paint on baseboard...



second coat of mouse ears on baseboard and beginning of "screen" rough out... i'm gonna need to get some black receptacles...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:34am

screen rough out...



my "glidden grey gripper primer screen".... got something to project on at least while waiting for my screen to get here...



view from back of room...



all in all, not too bad of a day... hopefully tomorrow will bring more progress...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:31am

obligatory screen shot... not too bad, considering the late afternoon indirect light is coming in the window right next to it...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:30am

ah, ok, cool... i think i can probably handle that...


thanks, and thanks for the input on that... i'll check out the link...

yea, it remains to be seen how the all black wall is going to work out... it's pretty cool right now, but i don't know whether or not it'll become tiring when the novelty wears off...

made some more progress today, got the rest of the room primed...

try not to get too excited about pictures of a grey room... actually, the grey looks pretty good in there...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:29am

made a bit more progress... got a second coat of primer on the walls, and 2 coats of paint... the worst part of the job is over! YAY!!!! i DESPISE painting... now i can put my room back in some semblance of order again (not to mention find all the tools that are strewn about in there)...

i had gone back and forth on several paint schemes, and finally decided to steal the one that i liked the best, which is bigmouthindc's grey/black scheme... valspar "drizzling mist" on the walls now... baseboards/trim to be determined, but baseboards will be a very dark color and trim will be a color lighter than the walls...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:27am

next to come...

- put room back together... ugh, what a mess the whole upstairs of the house is now... this needs to happen before anything else, and is job 1 when i get home from work tonight...

- swmbo is going through paint samples for the baseboard/trim... i'm going to make her paint those...

- the black gom fr701 came yesterday, so i can get started on re-covering the bass traps and wall panels...

- make final decision on how to mount pj...

got the room back in some semblance of order today... nothing actually hooked up, but i can at least park my carcass on the sofa...

i decided that rather than cover the bass traps, i'd make panels, and cover the front corners at a 45 degree angle with them... i think that will force even more focus towards the screen...

sadly, my woodworking skills amount to "measure 10 times, end up cutting 3 times anyway"... so i drove over to dick blick's in philly at lunch and got some stretcher strips...



push them together, square them up, join the corners, bam, done...



all of them put together...



a day without painting something black is a like a day without sunshine...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:25am

i got two of them stretched with gom today... the rest will have to wait until tomorrow... it's not hard, but it is tedious, and my aged knees ain't happy with all this up and down, up and down...

frame laid out on cut fabric...



first staples, canvas pliers holding other side tight...



two finished products... came out nice and tight... still need to trim the leftover fabric on the back... my corners pretty much suck too, but that's not visible from the front...



i'm pretty happy with the way they are turning out... the stretchers are a godsend... when you factor in the the time and aggravation they saved me, they are a bargain (and it's not like they cost a lot to begin with)...

Edited by ccotenj - 7/7/12 at 6:20am

screen shipped today by freight, so it should be here within a week...

tomorrow evening's tasks...

- finish stretching corner panels...

- make mounting points for them and get them up...

- get at least some audio in here...

^^^

sure... any and all suggestions are welcome...

unfortunately, a false wall wouldn't work... i'd end up with a room that's only about 7-8 feet deep... not to mention that it would fall right in the middle of a window and the doorway to the room....

plus, i WOULD run into a waf issue (as well as a maf issue) there if i hid the speakers and she couldn't see them...

^^^

kiddies aren't allowed in my house...

even bringing it to the door wouldn't work... it would fall in the middle of the window (not to mention a radiator that is NOT moving)... and again, if i did bring it to the door, the room would only be 7-8 feet deep...

also keep in mind that these are rear-ported transmission line speakers, and they require a certain amount of space behind them...

if i was building a dedicated space, and had the room, i'd definitely go with a false wall... but it's not feasible in the space i'm in, unfortunately...

^^^

thanks chris... i'm hoping that i'm reaching the end of the journey... if nothing else, i've reached the limitations of how much stuff i can actually cram into this room... although with a bit of creativity, i MIGHT be able to get another subm in here...

i fully expect a visit from you once it's done... we will eat, drink and be extremely merry...

i'll admit i'm running out of energy... the only thing i got done yesterday was to push some stuff around and check out some subwoofer locations... sadly, i've had a setback there, i've got an amplifier problem on one of the subs... waiting to hear from mark on that... shouldn't be an issue getting it taken care of... it's possible the electronics gods are telling me that it's time to do the amp upgrade...

the screen is "on fedex vehicle for delivery"... with any kind of luck, it will be "on chris' wall for watching" by tonight... i was hoping to have the room completely ready when it got here, and i'm close... i've got to stretch 3 more panels for the bass trap covers and get those mounted... ought to be able to knock that out in 2 or 3 hours... i've also got to re-cover two wall panels, but that shouldn't take long at all...

other than that:

- swmbo needs to pick the trim colors, which i'm hoping to get done this weekend...

- swap out white receptacles for black...

- construct/find an appropriate center channel stand...

- going to try to order the pj mount either today or early next week, depending on when various people get back to me with prices on it... unless something drastically changes, i'm going to use one of the chief wall mounts for it...

- need to decide where to put the rack for all the other stuff... everything (including the pj) is now on a very high tech rack that i got from home depot... translated: a heavy duty shelving unit that i crammed behind the couch to get everything out of the way... the "best" place would be in the back right corner, but there's a window there... we'll see how that works out...

- need to find a remote controlled motorized black out shade for the back window... i should probably do this on the other two windows as well... motorized shades are painfully expensive...

- after the screen is in, then i can experiment with lighting... i already removed the ones that were directly above the projector... i think the high mounted side ones are going to be ok... we'll see where everything ends up with that, i'm going to go with good old fashioned "trial and error" there...

- need to order some triple black velvet and:

1) make/stretch panels to go around the screen...
2) make covers for the speakers...

all in all, i'm pretty satisfied with the progress thus far... i should have a functional setup within 2 weeks of starting the project... for me, that's a miracle...