Theater 3.0 - Rise of The Popcorn Machines! - Page 5

Ha! Nice!

Regarding the question around the rope light and soffit. I actually had considered it initially, since I loved doing it in my last build. However, there are a couple of obstacles this time around.

First, I had 10 foot ceiling I was working with before, so reducing headroom around the perimeter of the room wasn't an issue. Here, I'm a little more limited. Also, when looking at the screen wall, there are 2 issues on the left and right of the room. On the right, an HVAC register is very close to the exterior wall. This would have to be relocated if a soffit went in. In addition to this, on the left side, the soffit would have to span across the left wall to the connect to the bar, which would reduce headroom in the hall area between the two rooms.

That being said, I have considered adding some additional accent lighting in the floor of the stage though. Maybe just some small 3" LEDs in front of the columns.

Speaking of columns - my initial design called for a 4 sided column center between the outside edge of the stage and the screen wall. After re-thinking this, I'm not sure what this buys me over a 3 sided column that actually butts up to the front wall.

Thanks. The 2 biggest isssues I think I'm going to face are (1) positioning of the rear row of bar seats so that they don't interfere with traffic patterns and (2) finding the right brown color scheme to darken the room and give it the look we're hoping for while not causing the white baseboards, doors, and windows to stand out. I can see replacing the carpet in the theater area down the road to pull it together more too, but it will be baby steps.

Still hoping to get wiring going in the next few weeks, so I'll update the thread as needed. Anyone want to buy that giant couch in the pictures so I can get some theater seats to replace it?

UPDATE!!

Works continues tomorrow morning on the basement. My 32 pound Monoprice arrived today full of Cat6, speaker wire, HDMI, component, coax, and subwoofer cables. I'm having 3 new 20 amp circuits installed - 1 for the projector and AV rack, and 2 more for future appliances in the bar area and wine cellar.

We'll fish all the lines through the ceiling for the AV, as well as run some additional Cat6 and coax over to the unifinished area in the mechanical room where my router is. I've decided to install some kind of CCTV system with some cameras to keep an eye on things outside, especially since we're still in a construction zone for the next year or two. The rack has plenty of space, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Next, I'll be pulling two lines of Cat6 up to my loft area where the Xbox 360 and PS3 reside. The builder did a great job of running Cat5 to most rooms EXCEPT the loft, but we do have a conduit going up to the attic, so it's just a matter of dropping some cables down the wall to accomodate this.

Finally (and yes, I know some people will think we're crazy for doing this to a new home), we're closing off the open area up front in the home that my wife is using for her home office. I purchased a pair of 30" french doors with a 10" transom above to fill the space. We'll need about 3 feet of framing on each side, so I figured I'd have the contractor do it while he's out here. If all goes well, we'll have the wiring and framing done tomorrow. I'll post some pics of the progress.

Thanks. It's baby steps, but we're getting there. The guys fishing the wires for me think I'm crazy. I have about 1800 feet or so of wire between what's being ran here and what's going to the mechanical area and loft.

Figured I wasn't the only one crazy around here. We made a little more progress than intended on Friday, mainly because of the multiple projects going on. The guys were able to pull all of my cables except for 4 Cat6 cables that I want to run from the loft to the basement. We have a conduit to the attic, so it's just a matter of knocking it out first thing tomorrow morning.

That being said, we also got the french doors hung in the front office, so they wanted to move forward with the drywall. While they were out getting lunch, I managed to insulate the wall, so the gyp was hung, taped, and mudded while we went to my wife's Christmas party. Since they were purchasing drywall, I just went ahead and pulled the trigger on the basement as well. End result - the equipment closet and soffit are now drywalled as well.

The installer is allergic to dust, so he's not our man for sanding. I thought about doing it myself, but instead decided to cruise Craigslist for some contractors looking for work. We have a total of about 200 square feet of drywall that just needs to be sanded. I'm pretty sure 50 cents a square foot is a fair number for this, so I'm just waiting to get a quote back that makes sense.

I realized this morning that I meant to run a handful of Coax over to the mechanical room for future television and CCTV systems, so I'll have one more task in the morning for the guys. with any luck, the upstairs walls will be painted this coming week!!

I'll post some pictures later today of the progress. We had a party down there last night, so the basement is still a little hungover.

So after several weeks, I awoke to find myself in a dark cold place. What had happened? Where had I gone? Why did I have this long Gandalf-ish beard?? There was only one logical answer. I had too much to drink at the family Christmas gathering and slipped into a coma for several weeks.

I'm not exactly sure what happened while I was out. It took every once of energy left in my body to crawl up the stairs to my office. As I type this, I am still laying on the floor, routing all energy in my body to my index fingers so that the world may see this and know to send help. I am Legend, and this is my story....

While I was out, I do believe the minions were set to work. The front wall appeared to have some sort of stage constructed, and there were wires coming from the ceiling. My only guess is that they will soon be hidden by the addition of columns:




As I turned around to view the backside (NICE!!!) I begin to hear a song playing in the room. "One of these things is not like the others... One of these things is not like the others". I immediately cued into a picture in my inbox of 2 skinny girls and a fat chick, but alas, that was not what was calling for me. Up above it looked as if a soffit had been created. The minions HAD been hard at work. Two speakers were mounted (yea, I said it) and there was a hole with a projecter in it (Oh SNAP.. I said it again!).



I continued to go deeper (THREE TIMES?!?!?! he CRAZZZZY!!) and was rewarded by the sight of a rack coming to fruition. While the opening was constructed and drywalled, it did not appear to have the actual rack in place yet, so my minions must have used the existing stand to support the electronics.



One can only imagine the level of overwhelming excitement that began to come over me. I truly believe it was that, and that alone, that willed my famished body to begin the journey up the stairs that would ultimately lead to this post.

Thanks. That's actually the colors the builder finished the basement with before we moved in. The color in the rack pic is the most accurate. The other looks like mustard to me.

Anyways, the plan is to paint the walls a deep brown to give it more of the mancave look. I'm going black on the front wall as well, and the ceiling from the soffit forward will be dark too.

Nope.. I'm listening

I've been looking at one of the slide-out rotating rack. Pricey, but I'm concerned it might be the only option that allows me to access the equipment from behind.

Mine were actually from Russia, and spoke very little english

Sorry I've been away so much lately. Between work, the family, and all of the other projects going on around here, I haven't had much time to actually visit the thread. I should definately be more active moving into the summer now though.

We're in the process of balancing some funds between the theater and some outdoor work (patios, flowerbeds, firepit, etc), so I've been busy getting quotes from everyone. We also recently closed in an area up front to make a 2nd office in the house, so that's just about wrapped up now.

Anyways, budget permitting, here's the order of work to be done:

Speakers - I'm going to go with a pair of Klipsch CDT5800CII in-ceilings for the surrounds. I eventually need to replace the front RB35s with some beefier front channels, but that will be a bit. I'm also going to swap out the RB35 I'm using for a center and replace it with the RC62II. The reason I'm putting this at the top of the list is because I need the ceiling speakers so I can cut the hole in the ceiling before painting.

Next up will be the seats. I've decided on a row of 4 Palliser Peppers with power recline. Once they arrive, I'll install 4 bass shaker pros in them and wire them up to a Dayton 250W plate subwoofer amp to be stashed in the rack. I need to pop some baseboard off of a column in the room to get the speaker wire to the shakers, so I want this done prior to painting as well, just in case I need some touchup.

Phase 3 will be paint. I think I'm going to use my guy that did the office to do this, since the quote was good. I don' have exact colors yet, but the front wall will be black and the rest of the walls and soffit will be a darker brown. The ceiling in the theater area will also get a dark brown treatment.

Phase 4 will be the screen, since it will be hard to watch a movie on a now black wall. I need to measure one more time, but am planning on going with a 136" 2.35:1 Precision screen from Carada. I've used them twice before and have nothing but good things to say about them. If that's too big for the space, I'll step down to 128" like I had before.

I'm going to save the rack for last. The Middle Atlantic AXS-43 is already expensive enough, but they don't even include the rails and stand to install and service it. Those two things alone are almost $500. MA really knows how to stick it to you.

There's a bar, MAME machine, pinball machine, fireplace, and a few other things to come after all of this, but it will be over time.

All of that being said, I can't get started on any of this until the stage and columns are in place. I have every intention of getting the sand in the stage this weekend and screwing the top down on it. We have a friend of the family that should be able to get the columns done. I've altered the design a little, as you'll see in my sketch below:



I need access to the speaker from the front, so that panel will either need to be hinged or simply pop off. I like the hinged idea, but it will be a little difficult to hinge the crown and baseboard on the column when opening it. The reason I'm going with a single width all the way up is to accommodate any speaker I can throw at it. If I did a tapered design like I was initially showing, I may end up limiting myself. I'd like to do some holes on the inside too to hold a shelf, similar to the different height options you get when installing shelving on bookcases. This would allow me to move a single shelf up or down to adjust the height of any speaker I put in there - essentially eliminating the need for stands.

That's about it. I'll post some pics of the sand progress this weekend (fingers crossed)!!!

So I calculated 13 bags of sand for the two subwoofer areas on the stage. A quick trip to Lowes and two wheelbarrow loads down to the basement yielded this:




I pulled the lid off of the stage and covered the two corners with a .7 mil tarp. Between the two areas, I ended up using 12 bags of sand. The right side of the stage had a smaller 3rd chamber to take a little more sand.






I still need to fill the middle cavities with insulation, as well as let the sand dry out for a few more days. The next step will be to pull the cables up through the top of the stage and screw everything down.


I also had someone come out to give me a quote on putting together some columns. After bouncing back and forth, I decided to go with option #2 in my initial design and have 2 removeable panels on the front to handle different size speakers. After 2 reminders,and a week and half later, he finally called me with the quote last night. Needless to say, it was almost twice what I thought it should be, so I'm continuing to look. I'm getting a little frustrated with contractors inflating their pricing on small jobs just because they feel like they can.


On a more positive note, I ordered 4 of these yesterday!

I finally took some time tonight to draw up a more detailed design for the columns to pass on to the contractor. What do you think?

Thanks. I'm still fine tuning a few things, but I think it will work. I know at some point I just need to go with my gut and see how it turns out.

Getting the wheelbarrow down to the basement was actually quite easy. Just a quick jog around the back of the house and through the sliding doors into the basement