The MacBeth Theater (flood resilient build) - Page 3

Seems like most in the area are NOVA builds.

I have that exact same window. For me there are four in the basement, two of which are now covered by an addition crawlspace. The two in the theater are the only way out of the basement in an emergency, if there is a need to ventilate such as smoke or if it floods again to remove humidity. That being the case I want to be able to access those windows fairly easily. Humidity and fabric are not good friends. Luckily my velvet masking panels and screen trim seemed to have come back into shape after it dried out. I'll eventually build a new screen and center it anyway so new masking panels will be built.

I'm running a removable soffit in front of the window and the rest will be covered with a fabric panel. Planning on industrial strength Velcro to hold the panels in place in addition to resting on top of the 1" lip on the wainscoting.

Note to self, don’t try to go to home depot at 8:45 at night. Sprinting across the store to get stuff in 15 mins is no fun. Also wound up getting unfaced insulation and the wrong work box which I have to take back tonight.

I didn’t bother with pictures because looking out outlets, can lights and romex isn’t particularly exciting. I ran my speaker cable to the riser for future bass shakers. I ran just one length of 14 gauge wire for each row, I hope that is enough?

I got a fish stick and was able to fish my coax behind a finished wall to the breaker panel which is where the SAT comes in. I then ran it behind where my left rear surround column will be into the main soffit then to the rack.

So now I have HDMI, romex for the power extender, coax for SAT receiver and seven-14ga speaker cables run to the rack area. The sub will be below the rack so my sub cable will be installed later. I don’t need a IR repeater and I have no room for any other subs in the room so no additional sub cables will be run. I’ll run a temporary network cable to the blu-ray player if it needs updating as the router will be in the next room. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything.

The electrician will be coming back this week as we forgot the outlet in the riser. I won’t be using it now but if in the future I upgrade to powered seating it will be there.

Going to try and do some work most evenings. It’s hard because the room isn’t sound proofed so running loud power tools isn’t an option. I’ll have to schedule that for early evening or weekends most likely. Going to try and finish my removable soffit pieces tonight, cutting in the garage and see if that wakes anyone up.

Not a great deal of progress, hoping for more this weekend. Riser outlet is run, half of the wall and riser are insulated, I need to pick up a few more rolls of R19 & R13.

I miscalculated on my riser height so now I'll need to add a 3 inch step and move the riser light up an inch. Anyway a few pics...




Where the step will go, this is 3 3/4 inches so at most I'l go 3 inches with the step


Can lights, exciting!

Six in total, and where that hole is should be about where the PJ will be hung.

Weekends update:






4" flex vent to help remove the heat. I'll either put another 4" vent or a return on the other side.



Removable soffit pieces


Just need to put up blocking for the PJ this week and should be putting up drywall Saturday morning.

My brother has been busy for the past few weeks and for a few coming up as well so no access to his work van or F250 so my wife's mini-van has had to pull truck duty. 4x8 sheet goods? Yes they fit. 10' lumber fits as well, betting I could squeeze 12' materials as long as it was something that could bend like shoe molding. I'll have to measure one time.

Thanks, the Riser is 9' 3" from the front wall (chairs will be as tight to the riser as possible) so when reclined my eyes should be about 9'-9.5' away from the screen; Its a small room. Final seating is 2 in the front row and 4 in the back, no idea why I thought I could get 3 across in each. Going to be tight enough with two, walkway and access to the rack.

I checked this weekend and I'll have just enough room to open the rack door and not hit a recliner, yay!

The MacBeth is for location; it's the closest main road in the neighborhood and I couldn't really think of anything better.
Edited by design1stcode2nd - 12/11/12 at 8:49am

I’ve decided I’m going to run an HDMI cable to the planned location of the lighted poster. I may still go with a lighted poster at some point (at first it will just be a regular snap frame poster). This will give me the option of installing an LED TV to use as a poster and 2nd display.

I found a Premier TV mount that rotates, extends, tilts and swivels so I could have a TV in vertical format and either feed it poster images from a USB drive or something like an Apple TV and then pull it out, rotate it and use it as a regular TV.

I need some HVAC help. Having a hard time getting my HVAC guy to come out and the more I’m thinking about it for right now I’m going to make the HVAC changes myself.

I want to add one more supply to the theater by just cutting another vent in the main trunk (that is how the one vent in the theater is now). There is about 2 inches between the vent and the drywall soffit where I’ll make my cut. I’m guessing I can get some vent material and fold it into shape for a 4x10 vent and then perhaps cut some fingers or make a flange with snips to attach it to the main trunk? Adding some metallic duct tape to keep it in place and then add the register.

If that doesn’t make sense I can try to take a picture this evening.

I’m not pulling a length of duct off the trunk or otherwise I’d use a 6” boot to a flex duct so the register just needs 2” of material to connect to the main trunk.

I’m going to have one 4” and one 6” flex duct connected to fans to exchange air with other parts of the basement. If that proves insufficient I’ll explore other options later.

Exciting pictures of drywall. I hope to put the cornerbead on and perhaps mud/tape this week.





Bottom of the rack will not be drywalled per Dr. Hsu's recommendation.

Anyone know what I should use to cut into an HVAC vent? I have snips and was thinking I could drill a hole or two with a metal bit unless there is a better way? Maybe cut it so I can fold the flaps over so no sharp edges?

I took a look at the existing vent in the theater and it just seems like a 4x10 hole was cut into the trunk and blocking was added with some foil tape to span the distance between the vent and drywall; looks to be about 3 inches or so.

I won’t be able to add blocking but I’ll probably need to add something for the register vent to screw into.

Corner bead an misc holes are done, going to attempt my fist taping/mudding tonight. I’ve patched drywall and done screw heads before but not taped or done bead, we’ll see how it goes.

Jigsaw sounds like a good idea, OK I'll pick up a metal blade, thanks.

The one I have has variable speeds and oscilating so I'll give that a go, if I hose it up I have snips and can do the rest with them.

There is room but I didn't put any in there. There will be one more 6" can on the soffit to the left; the electrician miscounted and will install that once they come to finish.

Electrical will be one of the later things finished as I'll need to mud, prime, paint, trim and make panels. I want my rear sconce to be flush with the panel so that might need some electrical changes. I neglected to tell my electrician that there would be a panel there; same goes for the dimmers.

I was planning on using shoe mold to provide some distance between the frame and fabric to help minimize that. Didn't think about any light passing through so thanks for the heads up. I ordered some Rosco Velour Black paint for the ceiling and soffits so I’ll hit the screen frame with that as well. Behind the frame I’m planning on covering the wall and 2’ of soffit/side walls with Syfabrics black velvet so reflection shouldn’t be an issue.


Well my foray into taping drywall and mudding corner bead didn’t go as well as I would have liked. Finishing, unlike hanging sheetrock is a technique, experience and talent type of job and I don’t have the skills. So my brother will stop by on Saturday and do the mudding. I’ll take over after that for sanding, priming, painting; I do a fair job with that.

I made a quick mockup of the back wall just to get an idea of what it would look like. I was planning on having 3 panels above the wainscoting with the sconce in the middle. When I mocked these up it didn’t look great so I thought about putting some false columns in to break up the 12’ wall (close to 10-11 with the 45 degree rear surround columns).

Here is the original design (the brown areas are stained poplar)


Here it is with the columns


I didn't care for the pumpkin color once I photoshopped it in, actually leaning toward the dark red (as shown) or even dark brown now.
Edited by design1stcode2nd - 12/21/12 at 10:06am

I got a lesson is drywall finishing this past weekend and Christmas eve. Apparently there is taping, blocking, skimming in that order. I apparently tried to do all of it at the same time. Last blocking and skim coat should go on this week I hope in time for sanding this weekend.

The depot delivered my Kreg jig and a drywall sanding attachment for my shop vac; looking to try out both soon. I did get the blocking in for the projector mount and taped/blocked that. I also have my Rosco Velour black paint which I’m looking forward to putting on and seeing how black it really is.

Is there any special primer I should use under a black paint?

I need to pick up paint before long to match with the existing walls in the basement so I'll get some dark primer for the ceiling/soffits while I'm at it (hoping to wait for another Sherwin-Williams 30% off sale, betting they will do it for the new year). I'll be rolling it so we'll see how it goes as far as texture. I use 1/4 nap rollers and they have done pretty good so far (the existing screen was rolled with 1/4inch).