LEVEL 4: Center for Entertainment build - Page 6

I finished the acoustic treatments on the front wall. It's nice to have the fiber glass covered!

Here, I've finished placing the insulation on the wall.


On this side edge, I took the extra pieces of insulation I had and filled the area. It was about 6" by 7" by 78". I had nothing else to do with the scraps.


I took Brad's advice and sprayed the washers black. Thanks Brad!


Finally got the speaker fabric stapled up, soft side out. I only had about 6" left on the length, so I just barely made it across. That was close! I thought I had ordered a lot extra. Sheesh!


This is the fifth night in the last week that I've stayed up past midnight after my kids go to bed to work on the theater. Getting that drywall finished was like a launching pad to productivity. It probably has to do with the fact that I'm now doing stuff I've seen here and have been planning and waiting for a long time.

I got the velvet glued and stapled to the top header.


For the most part, I'll have a header running across the front, but here, the head ends, and I have the velvet running along the ceiling/soffit. I used an strip of aluminum for ducting, sprayed it with glue, wrapped it with velvet, and put in a couple staples for good measure. It gives me a nice clean edge.


Here, I took my exposure and made it really long with no flash to show you the velvet. Normally, it's black. Like blacker than black, but I think this is interesting.


It turned out really well! I used 3M's 77 Super spray adhesive.

Q: Is building a stage with 2x4's going to be too short? I really just want a hint of a stage, but I'm starting to think that with the carpet, a 2x4 stage with two 1/2" ply decking will be comically short. Any thoughts?

In other news, just dropped another 1,200 at HD for what I'm expecting is my last shipment of lumber and building supplies. About $400 of that was 8 sheets of birch hardwood 4x8 sheets for my columns and coffered ceiling. I also spent another grand on the three doors and all the trim at my local doors and moulding shop. I feel spent: literally.

I expect minimal costs until the carpet hits, and then down the road, the seats for the back row. But we're not in a hurry for those because we already have the sectional for the front row.

Also, my wife is generously taking my kids out of town Friday through Sunday, so I'll have a bunch of time to work on the HT! Usually, I restrict myself to the time after my kids go to bed.

That's a great point that I hadn't even considered! I was planning on carpeting the front stage with black and the room carpet will be a lighter color. Thanks Warren!
Nice reference, Tedd! I had looked at his theater many times because we have similar proportions and his 2.35 gaming, but not recently. I think his stage looks great, so the 2by4 height is definitely an option for me.
Edited by stevegravley - 7/26/12 at 7:57am

I took a closer look at SOWK's stage. It looks like he wrapped his in velvet or some other cloth, which gives it a nice clean line and works well for the short stage. I may have to go with carpet because of my kids. That means that with the pile of the carpet on that 1" roundover, the top part / lip of the carpet will be about the same height as the 2by4 framing / lower part. I think I'm talking myself into a 2by5 or 2by6 height...

What I'll do tonight or tomorrow is setup a couple of framing boards up against where I cut my existing carpet. Then I can place a couple of osb decks on there and give it the ol' visual test.

Thanks for all the feedback! I'm going to go with 2by6's. Plus, that's the height of my riser, so they'll match really nice.

Tomorrow kicks off my 2.5 days of rockin' on the home theater with no family, so I should have a lot of updates! (hopefully I don't get stuck on anything!)

So I received the Spoonflower sample. The blacks are about 20% up from true black, so not too bad. I pinned the fabric on my wall, and it's awesome, BUT it's too busy. I think I will choose solid color panels for the sides like FR701 Chocolate and maybe just do pictures on the back wall, if at all. I can tell you that when the screen is lit up, my eyes would wonder to the pictures, and I want the focus to be on the screen exclusively.


After installing both bass traps and the front wall, the bass spikes improved a lot. Instead of a +-15 DB range, I am guessing it's closer to a +-7 DB spike now. So it's about half, which I'm really pleased with! I still have to add the 4" oc703 + 1" spacer panels on the back of the room. That whole back wall is very hot for bass! So, I expect that will help as well.

Oh! And I'm so obsessed with this HT that I often vomit my interest onto my co-workers. This is the cake they made for me.
Edited by stevegravley - 7/26/12 at 3:44pm

My friend who's a handy man kind of guy works at my place. We talk about the theater a few times per week and sometimes people will overhear us. Otherwise, I'm not that talkative of a person. Besides, when someone asks me how my day is going, I assume they mean, "can you tell me about your plan for acoustic treatments?"

That's a safe assumption, right?

Part 1: Prepping

Lots to report after a full weekend of home theater work! I am sore all over, but especially my knees took a beating. I should have invested in knee pads! Ah, well...

First up, getting the room ready for the stage build. I'm just going to power through these.

This pipe was pointing into the room, but I wanted it turned 90 degrees so my column could be a about 1.5 inches shallower. I cut above and below the joint, turned it, and used couple-rs to reattach the joint.


I cut the carpet away and cleaned the front area


This is the header for the front. That part's done!

Edited by stevegravley - 7/30/12 at 11:19am

Part 2: Building the Stage!

I started by building the ladder base. By the way, I did end up going with 2by6's.


Here I'm testing the amount of curve I wanted on the stage. The header is 6", but I felt the stage looked better with an 8" curve; perhaps because it's wider than the header.


While I had the test in place, I marked out the blocking for the curve and then attached them to the stage


So, my floor is NOT level. Ha! Shims to the rescue. After these babies, I had no rocking back and forth and everything was solid.


Here's the front face attached. I'm listening to some tunage on my Roku/Pandora.


I then added some insulation


The two layers of plywood sit on top of a layer of tar paper. This is right before I cut the curve.


I built this little tool to run along the face of the curve while drawing on the top of the decking. Then I used a jigsaw to cut.


I was able to most of the way across, but the jigsaw couldn't reach the corner. I did that on my sawhorses.


Here's a mediocre shot of the stage finished. I'll have a better one later.

Edited by stevegravley - 7/30/12 at 11:19am

Part 3: Behind the Screen

What time is it kids? Time for yet another minimalist screen build!

Vertical supports are up


Here I attached the the tops a little differently because I lacked space on the outside of me right support beam. It works great.


At the base, I just attached my support directly to the stage. I might have used concrete screws, but I didn't have a hammer drill handy.


Using a laser lever, I attached the crossbeam.


The block is how I attached it


I built some "sturdy enough" speaker stands from the boards that used to be the shelving.






I know this is probably overkill, but I had the paint out already, so I painted the staples on the front wall. (still wet in this picture, but they disappear now)


Here's the final shot for the area. I did paint that pipe where it was ok.

Edited by stevegravley - 7/30/12 at 11:18am

Part 4: The Screen

Here are a couple of pictures of Firelyte (second one) and me (he caught me by surprise, hence, the blank look) to give you some idea of the size of the room. We're both 6' 2", so we look like giants, but the room is fairly short! It doesn't seem that short when you're in the room. Also, you can see the stack of FJ 1 by's that I used for the screen supports and will use for the screen.




So for our test, we ran 16:9 and 2.35 content at three different sizes. My original plan to have an 11' wide screen, but it was too big. I ended up choosing 126", or 10.5 feet. It just felt better.

I'm taking out a couple staples that I used to keep the temp screen up. Most of them came out with the fabric.


Using my table saw, I ripped the 1by4's down to form the shaped frame. First I cut at 7 degrees, then at 45.


Next, I mitered the 45's on the boards and laid out them out to make sure my cuts were good. They were.


I bought a Kreg jig, and predrilled the holes before I put the velvet on.


Here's a shot during the wrapping. It was kind of a hassle, but they turned out well.




Joining the frames was a bit of a snafu. I thought my FJ was a true 1 by 4, but it was .75 by 3.75. So, that meant my kreg jig holes were too deep. I was able to get about 3 of the 8 to screw in well. So then, I grabbed my 16 ga brad nailer and put 4 2" nails into each corner. I wasn't 100% satisfied, so I added these wonderful glorious aluminum corner brackets. That screen is solid as a rock now... well, as solid as a picture frame at least.


Now I took my Seymour Centerstage XD fabric and stapled it on using my pneumatic stapler. It did not go well. I have a few wrinkles to get out. The staples are a bit buried, so I'm not sure how to handle that, but that's my next task. Also, I will put some 5/8" 4by8 sheet underneath the next time I staple fabric to reduce the sag. Otherwise, though, the screen looks nice in the frame.


Despite the wrinkles, when a movie is showing, you don't see them! I will have to fix them, but here are a couple of shots of the uncalibrated screen in action. (by the way, I love the Seymour fabric, wow!)





SO....
That concludes my weekend without kids update. I think I made some nice progress!

Anyone have thoughts on fixing that fabric and/or getting the staples out?
Edited by stevegravley - 7/30/12 at 2:58pm

I have two aluminum bars that I have one coat of black paint on. I was waiting for it to dry so I could apply another coat. I wasn't sure if I'd use them or not since it seems solid and I have three zbars supporting the frame at the top, but I probably should. I'll add those and see if I can pull the fabric a little when I attach them.

I also am considering, if I have enough slack, that I could pull the fabric in and staple it in front of the last staple. So, pull and put another staple in front of the first one. I'm not sure if this'd work or not. I'll try to take a few staples out tonight and see how it goes. Maybe I can get by with just adjusting 5-8 of them.

I may swing by HD on the way home and pick up this Tack Puller, which is basically the same tool you listed above. Thanks for the idea! (I secretly hope I can just pull the fabric tighter without having to remove any more staples)

I did end up buying that tack puller/remover. Fortunately, all of the staples were either flush or proud, so they came out easily enough. The tool was very helpful. I was able to get all of the wrinkles out, but when I put the screen up, the frame was bowed toward the middle due to the pressure I'd applied to the frame while stapling the fabric. So, it turns out I need to add the support at the thirds lines. I painted another coat on my aluminum bars last night. I am confident they will provide support to prevent the bottom edge from falling away, but I am worried about the bars bowing when trying to keep the frame from bending inward.

I think I'll wrap some FJ scrap pieces I have in the speaker cloth I used for the frame, and use those instead.

The screen has been fixed!

I ripped some MDF 3/4" boards so, combined, they were exactly the height of the screen and 8' long. Then, I took the staples out of one side of the screen and laid the screen down over the mdf so the frame was on the floor and hugging the mdf. This way, the frame was being pushed out by the exact right height on the entire length of the top and bottom.

After the frame was secure, I stapled again. Once that was done, I took some 1by6 FJ I had laying around and mitered them to 1" short of the height of the screen. Then, I wrapped them in velvet with some scraps I had laying around. Finally, I attached at the thirds with three 1 1/4" course thread screws on each end.

I attached the hanging hardware and hung up the screen. It was a million times better! I also used my laser level to check the straightness of the top of the frame, and it was within 1/16th of an inch. Good enough for me! But, I did have two trouble areas. 1: I still had some slack right at the base of the left support. 2: there was a seam on the right support where I had two pieces of velvet coming together. This caused a couple of small bumps where the velvet bunch a little since it sits flush with the screen fabric.


So, down came the screen. For the first problem, I took off the support while the frame was sitting on the mdf again and tightened three staples. For the second, I removed the support, cut away a quarter in of velvet, and stretched and stapled it back down.

Finally, my screen is perfect!! Here are two pictures.




The visible screen is 6.5" from the top and 12.25" from the bottom. I have 15" on each side to play with.
Edited by stevegravley - 8/1/12 at 10:59am

I bought 1by4 poplar at first, but after getting it home and moving it a few times, it just didn't have the rigidity I was hoping for. It was way too bendy.

Then I bought the finger jointed 1by4's (.75 by 3.75) that most of use for the minimalist wall build. I found it in the external house trim section (not the interior trim section) at home depot. It is much stronger is what I ended up using. I wish they had carried the 5/4 size at my HD, but they didn't and the smaller stuff works.

However, I was still worried about warping and bending. So I added the two supports in back that run the height of the screen with more of that FJ 1x6's. This helped a lot. I found that when I was stretching the fabric, the frame just bowed in a bit (maybe 1/2" over the entire length). So supports probably helped the most. I also have three 24" zbar mounting kits. Two on the extreme ends, and one the middle to keep that top frame perfectly level.

I think I have it now where the frame will stay true. I'm pretty confident it will, though we'll see over time.

What thread?

Lemme tell ya. Until I have those columns in, I don't have surround sound, and that ain't cool. I'll keep on keepin' on. The end is in sight and, as you may have notice, I'm plowing through it pretty quickly these days!