Home Addition (Basement Theater) - Go (Relatively) Big or Go Home!

I've been reading on the forums here for a quiet a while, and figured I should stop being lame and post some pictures of the home theater / addition I'm currently in the middle of since it's a decent sized project. We're adding about 2200 sq ft to our house. So basically adding a house to our house. (insert craziness here). What started in my original drawing was a one floor addition, adding an office, full bathroom, and combination wet bar, pool table, and home theater/media room. However, since I have the (expensive) habit of going big, or going home, we ended up going with a three level addition. Home theater (17 wide, 24 long, 9'3 finished ceiling), half bath, and wine cellar in the basement (our current house is single floor). Main floor contains pool table & wet bar, my office, and half bath. Upstairs is full bathroom, guest room, closet big enough to fit a pack and play (hey, I'm old enough where mostly everyone has kids), and storage/utility room. Once I get through the general construction pictures and descriptions, most of my focus is going to be on the theater room, of course.

Here's the nice side yard, before I decided to pretty much bomb the crap out of it.



We had to move the phone, power, gas, and cable from the street into the house, due to it being where we wanted to dig. After we had all the permits and everything, I went down to the power company, and the lady was all, Are you sure you want to do this?. A little late for that, I thought


Here's a few pictures of the excavation, which started in October.

My kid watching the excavator.




No project can start without big problems, right? We got red tagged by the city and had OSHA out that shut us down for a while, as they were worried the garage would cave in. I don't have any pictures (since I was in a generally pissed off mood), but we had to build it back up 1.5 ft at a time, get soil tests, and then re-cut the garage slope. We ended up having to shift out the basement another 2 ft from the garage, resulting in us blowing up the main & upstairs by 2 more feet since I wasn't going to shrink the basement size. Since we're doing it owner/builder, I also have my OSHA 30 card now, which I was told I had to get (I'm going to avoid going on a rant about how NOBODY said anywhere in the permit process that I had to follow OSHA specifics).


Here's the steel & stemwalls. It's A LOT of rebar, and we ended up doing more than required. It also felt like a WWE steel cage match was going to happen at any second

About 30 cubic yards of concrete are in the footings, 30 in the stemwalls, and 30 in the slab. The stemwalls & slab also have XYPEX in them. The forms took forever, due to going deeper than the standard 8 ft. We reused the plywood for the floors - which was fun since I filled in the majority of the holes for soundproofing purposes.





The slab, which was ultimately had to cover to keep warm at night due to the freezing winter. Overall we got lucky with the weather all winter as it was super mild. This was probably the only real weather issue we faced.



We also painted the outside with BASF Sonneborn HLM 5000 (a.k.a. black tar stuff) for water proofing, and have some ridiculous amount of drainage rock, and a french drain and pump, to ultimately help with any water/hydrostatic pressure issues.

Framing of the basement. We double-framed a couple of the walls, and the other walls for the theater room were placed an inch or so from the concrete wall.





Framing of most of the first floor.



Finally backfilled. That is an AWSOME feeling!

Start of roof trusses.



Starting to look like a house! If I had a dollar for every time we've said this

One of my biggest issues to figure out was soundproofing. I was NUTS about this. Of course, it was almost irrelevant from the start, since the theater is away from everything in the existing house. My office is above it, but it doesn't really matter since chances are I'm watching the movie. But, since I grew up in a house that had walls that my mom called Bible paper thin, I went with the overreaction of being a little bit obsessed with it. We framed out 2x4 walls out from the stemwalls. Any wall that was a load bearing wall got double framed and attached with sound clips. I ended up going with solution 5 from http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/...oof-a-ceiling/. I did all the double-drywall between the joists myself. It took about a month to do as I did double over the theater room, single in the rest of the basement, and single between the main floor and upstairs (just to be a little crazy). The theater room itself was around 230 individual pieces of drywall I cut out, green glued, and screwed in. And then caulked with the green glue sealant. For insulation, we did blown-in insulation (Optima) between floors, and they super packed it super tight in the theater room. We did sound proof light boxes for the ceiling as well, and I either put 2 layers of 5/8 DD + GG in or above the HVAC vents, which is on its own zone and goes directly up to the heater on the third floor.

GenieClips + Hat Channel (not fully done in this pic). We also did R-MAX insulation for the 2 exterior walls (more for heat than sound), as the ceiling will still catch everything since it's wall to wall.



I also ran 2 conduits to each room of the addition for future expansion, and ran a 2 conduit for the projector, along with electrical romex for a Panamax MIW-XT power extender, which allows me to run the power from the projector back to the same power conditioner.
I originally planned to put the components in the back closet of the room. However, we were able to squeeze a small half bathroom down there, which was more important. We are going to put the components in custom made cabinets in the back corner of the room.

This is where we are at now. Drywall has been installed, and now it's on to tape/texture.






Regarding all the hardware, here's what we are going to have:

Projector: JVC-65U with Panamorph automatic lens
Screen: Most likely 133 Screen Innovations 2.4:1 Black Diamond 4K

11.2 surround - 3 Definitive Technology In-Wall RLS II speakers (front, left, front), 4 Definitive Technology In-Wall RSS II (side rears, back rears), 4 Definitive UIWBP/A Bipolar for front & rear presence speakers, Definitive SuperCube 2000 Sub (for the rear, had to go smaller due to size restraints), and Definitive SuperCube I for front. Originally I wasn't going to go 11.2 and just 9.1 or 9.2, but figured I might as well just max it out right away.

Yamaha Adventage RX-A3010BL
Some separate AMP for the rear presence, as the Yamaha receiver only does 9.2 natively

Oppo BDP-93 Bluray
PS3
Xbox360
Monster Power Conditioner
DirecTV HD DVR receiver

We plan on texturing tomorrow or Thursday, and then get the upstairs doors (for the guest bedroom, storage, and full bath installed). So it may be a week or so until any more updates on the theater room front...

Forgot to post pictures of the drywall installed. It looks like a room!

How so? We did insulate above them, or in the boxes, with DD + GG. So while it's not as "tight" as the rest of the room, there still is a good amount of insulation. The room above is the pool table room, and there will be a pool table right there, so I wasn't horribly concerned (one of those, "what can you do..." situations). We also ultimately had to put them there due to the BCI joists, and where you can put large holes is extremely limited due to the chart. Originally we wanted to run smaller, wider duct work, but my HVAC guy said it won't get the air flow he was happy with. And I didn't particularly want to run a soffit on both sides as I didn't know for sure what I wanted the room to look like, so the center it was...

Yeah, we insulated the crap out the ducts, and went with the optima to get up in the area between the ducts and the subfloor. And the vent itself had the DD+GG, so anything through the vent itself is at least (hopefully) somewhat absorbed. My biggest fear is really hearing it upstairs (top floor) and my office. The top floor obviously has the whole main floor to go through, plus drywall, optima, 5/8 drywall+GG, then subfloor, padding, carpet. So that should be ok. And my office is at the front of the theater room, so it's exposure is somewhat limited.

But I agree, it's by far the weakest area, but I think we did an *OK* job at it - better than nothing. If we had a master bedroom above it, I guess that'd be a little different of a story. But at some point, one just wants to get through this whole mess

Also, I should add the HVAC pipe is all hardpipe, not flex. Not sure if that makes it better or worse, LOL.

This was a big concern of mine before I started. But the projector is going to be about 6-7 ft behind the vent. I talked to the HVAC guy and we are going to use some sort of vent that blows the air mainly to the sides and maybe the front, depending. I also talked to my projector guy, and he thought it would be more than fine where it is. So here's to hoping!!!



Thanks =)

Thanks for all the nice comments so far!

Regarding location, none of the above . We're in Northern Nevada. It's pretty awesome here - my wife and I moved here a couple of years ago from the bay area. No state income tax (helps pay for the addition!), better prices on houses, less craziness, etc.

Today was a big day in the building process - the scaffolds are down! They got the stucco on, so no need for them anymore. It's crazy how fast it is going now. They are sanding the drywall tape tomorrow, then spraying the texture in the afternoon. And all the doors (ALL solid core), but two, are arriving tomorrow, so we can start installing those this weekend. The theater room is going to get a special door that my cabinet guy is going to build - probably go 2.5 inches thick or so, with a rounded top. And then a curved, glass door (or something along those lines) for the wine room. We are also doing a 1 3/4" solid core with external jams (so it has a better seal) for the hallway leading down to the theater room (since sound could escape out into the hallway), and then for my office (which I also DD + GG the common walls with the pool table room). I should note we did also did 2x6 framing, even for interior walls, and 5/8" drywall everywhere. And, putty pads in various spots.

Hopefully will have some more pics in the next few days as progress is made!

I haven't posted in forever, as it's definitely taken a while, but we now have a useable basement. We ended up going with the 2.4 133" Black Diamond .8 screen, and I love it. For projectors, we have two - JVC RS-55U and the BenQ W7000. We use the BenQ for every day TV, XBox, and 3d movies, and the JVC for 2d movies. I've also used the JVC for 3d movies, but the glasses aren't as comfortable, the ghosting issues are definitely there (in some movies more than others), and it's not quite as bright as the BenQ. Downsides of the BenQ are the colors aren't as good, and the blacks aren't as deep, and it's frikking loud (we are in high altitude mode, blah). We have 11.2 going, and the soundproofing has worked great. You can hear the rumble of the bass, but that's it. Here are some pics of where we are at. Still needs more finish work (trim, bathroom door + bathroom itself installed), some lighting mods, etc., but it's getting there!







Custom 2 1/4 thick, 8" tall solid door.


Custom made projector stand to hold both projectors.

Thanks - it's alder with a pretty normal stain on it. The crown is 4 pieces, and so are the baseboards. The rest of the house is white trim, but I wanted the basement to be different - and glad I made that decision =)