The Room Mclaren - Page 2

Great thread - will be interested in how the journey goes. Love the kitchen redo!

Great job!

Your renderings look great... I can't wait to see the build updates and the finished theater. You might want to look at using something like 3M DI-NOC "carbon fiber" film in your theater. It looks great, is fairly easy to apply, and would really add to the race theme. If you really want a cool display piece for your theater check out www.amalgamcollection.com for some 1/8 scale McLaren's and full scale replica steering wheels. They're impressive, but somewhat expensive. A full scale replica Button or Hamilton helmet from Ebay would be really cool too.

Also, it's McLaren with a capital "L". You wouldn't want to spend a lot for custom printing and have a typo.

Nice all the way around. Lol I went from that sux to WTF?! To oh cool that turned out well for you and then to great job.

Says alot when even construction people say they will sub out for the drywalling lol. I think I will take heed when the time comes.

Having just (only marginally) dealt with numerous supply lines running across the ceiling of my room I can certainly say that it's been quite a challenge. I think the thing to keep in mind is that no matter what you do, you have a hole through your upstairs floor to deal with where the vent comes through, so the celing joist space no longer becomes a sealed area.

I eventually did a single layer of 5/8 drywall, decoupled from the joists. I built backer boxes for the lights, but didn't go through the effort of dead-venting each vent hole that supplies air to my room. Instead I just put a few layers of drywall just above the openning, which should help reflect some sound back down to be absorbed before hitting the upstairs floor.

For the upstairs supply lines, I wrapped them in Safe 'n Sound insulation so that any sound getting into the vent has to first go through a full layer of that. Given that I'm still left with the gaping whole to deal with, I felt that was in line with the overall effectiveness of what I was targetting. My concept was to bring the whole construction to a certain acceptable level, and try not to go overboard on some areas while negating other weak-links that would leave me no further ahead.

The result? When I get my equipment set up (painting now) I have enough wiring in the room and the house that I'll actually be able to run ETF to show what it sounds like in my living room directly above. It went from "I can hear every word of your conversation downstairs" to conversations being inaudible. Music played fairly loudly though, can still be heard. The sound of the furnance will mostly drown it out, but if it's quiet and you listen (esspecially near a vent) you can certainly hear it faintly. I would say that for me watching at "reasonable" volumes, the sound going into the living will be persceptible but not distracting. Watching at "I'm showing off my system" levels, it'll definitely be heard upstairs for me.

All of that is just to give you a feel what you might be in for. The DD/GG will help for sure but I think to get maximal isolation and near-silence upstairs, you need to consider basically dead-venting each of your upstairs registers. I did a large dead-vent for a CA return in the rear of my room (the rear wall being much more of an isolation priority for me), and it works absolutely wonderfully.

My last bit of advice is be prepared for a very, very, long construction "delay" as you do all of the dead-venting, backer boxes, etc. It's amazing how many isolation issues and weak-links pop up once you start wrapping your head around it. Another one for me was the joist space above my room walls being open to the rest of the house as well; again, you're left with only 1 surface to block the sound and it's no longer a sealed container concept. I bet over half the man-hours into my room was dealing with isolation, and you can see that I went half-assed on a few aspects of it. I could probably have built a normal room for about 60% of the cost...

P.S. Great idea building the right side soffit to match; I did the same thing and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Turns a liability into something that looks like an intentional feature.

P.P.S. One last thought... It looks like your riser depth is planned at 4'6" with a 2' aisle, which is also what I'm planning for aisle depth. You have recliners in your diagram though and I think you may find that 2' of aisle is insufficient for a recliner. This thread details how a 5'6" riser was re-built at 7' depth because he felt that he needed more aisle space for the recliners. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1103345 If you're not doing recliners in the rear then I think you're set at the 2' spacing.

Nice run-down. THe other issue is the mass of the double drywall. If serious bass isolation is a big deal, a third sheet of drywall is an option. Ugh...

^^ Take head of everything Ted says; definitely a wealth of great information. I think the hardest thing I struggled with is where that line between reasonable and unreasonable is. For instance, triple-drywalling and then leaving open vents into the room would be a huge mistake. And to go 100% full, all-out, on isolation means levels of complexity, cost, and delay that are disheartenning to say the least.

At various times in the project it's easy to think "I don't want anyone in my family upstairs to hear anything from the room" but then in moments of sanity there's the realization that achieving that simple and lofty goal might be 10 or 20 K in time and expense; in that context, is it worth it? Can 5K in the proper materials and a good plan get you 90% the way there?

Here's another potential weak spot... The concrete floor providing flanking into the rest of your untreated basement and then upstairs from there...

Due to the mass, and to some degree that mass' contact with soil, make the concrete a less critical flanking path. Just a small note...

Glad to see you are getting back at it. Life and finances have to come first.
Center Stage XD is probably your brightest option for an AT material. Some can see the weave if the seating is too close but at your first row distance that should be no problem.
A decent cheap AT choice is spandex. You will need to go with two layers because it is quite translucent. White and Silver Moleskin from Spandex World are what most are using. Putting the silver on top of white helps with stray light and black level but in my experience it sucks the brightness out of the image. I went with white over silver and am quite happy for the money. If my seating was over 10 feet I would probably spend the extra $200 or so for XD just because it is slightly brighter and tends to give a marginally sharper image. The spandex "glows", making object edges a tiny bit fuzzy when viewed close up. XD doesn't do this. (I order a sample of XD for direct comparison.) Search on this forum and you should find lots of good information.

Hi Ragged - I have a CIH DIY screen that is 54.5" x 130" wide. Like you say it makes about 111" diag in 16:9. We sit on an L shaped sectional turned to face and frame the screen like a V. The apex is 15.5feet from the screen and edges are around 14feet. I can sit in either place and feel immersed in the movie. 16:9 is large but not overly so and makes a great xBox viewing area.

Nice job with your room so far. I just finished converting my basement to a Home Theater and wanted to share one of the things I came across. While my intention was not to make the basement soundproof by any means, I used Roxul Safe & Sound in the ceiling between the joists to help knock down the sound to a much lower level for those in the livingroom above. From what I can see from your posts you don't have a staircase to worry about, but in my case I found a majority of the sound escaping through the stairway in the middle of the room and through the basement door.

I would suggest at a minimum to use a solid core door and don't overlook this possible Achilles' Heel with all the great planning and attention to detail you have shown thus far.

I know exactly how you feel. We bought our house in 2009 and within a month, ripped out all the paneling, baseboard heat, ceiling tiles...everything. I framed a little but it mostly just sat dormant for almost 3 years, since we were saving & budgeting for this and that and the unexpected. Then this summer I just ordered everything and did it myself in the evenings and on the weekends. Like you, it was tough because we had a 10 month old, so I had to juggle work, being a dad and finishing the project. The whole job took me about three months (20' x 20'), but I finally finished it (I hung the Sheetrock and did the taping/muddying myself which took about 3 weeks since it was my first time doing that (didn't want to rush it and the good ol' learning curve). But now the whole family enjoys the new HT.

I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of the great work you're doing and your final masterpiece. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to share my experiences/knowledge but it seems that you already have a good handle on what your doing.

Best of luck!

Hope you're still happy with the color scheme, no matter how the current F1 season seems to be going.

First of all, it looks like your theater will need a name change for 2015 to McLaren Honda...

I've never seen clips and channel used to tackle a door recess. Frankly, I don't think it is even a recommended use / application of the clips and channel to be honest. Normally what is done is a "split jamb" where you have two separate pieces of jamb material and preserve an 1/8" to a 1/4" gap between the two pieces. This can then be covered with a molding ON ONE SIDE ONLY to preserve the decoupling. Make sense?

Regarding the swing....so I guess that means that you have to pull the door open, correct? Could you post a wider shot of the theater entrance from both inside and outside the theater?

And possibly color change if they go back to classic white&red. Which, if the coca-colasponorship rumour is true, seems quite possible.