Hawaii Home Theater Construction - Page 3

front of the house.... things are still messy but the house is taking form...




direct shot of the house....something will need to break that large open space of the addition, like what is on the garage peak...we shall see

Some updates; the house as a whole continues to progress, although sometimes slowly. The home theater continues to grow as well with a lot of the electrical wiring being installed as well as a smart box for Directv and the internet cable box.

Here is the outside updates;







The future kitchen area;



Here are the two rack closets. I will run balanced cables from the component rack on the left to the amplifier rack on the right. The door in the middle will enter into the home theater. A bit unusual but it should look pretty neat if it works out as planned.

Thanks for the encouragement Jim! Sorry to hear your secondary project was a pain. I'm sure you will be happy with it in the long run.

Construction has now progressed to the part where I’m mostly hands off until the inspector makes his way through to inspect the plumbing and electrical. As you might expect, the planned layout of the theater is very much like yours; I’ll have sconce lighting on three pillars one each side with smaller lights running around the periphery of the soffit.

I have a large retractable Stewart screen so I’m still planning on mounting a tv on the wall behind it. It was the last day of the “scratch” sale at the NEX near Pearl Harbor so I picked one up last night at a discount (*my family reading this will be collectively groaning as they say to themselves… “ugggh, another television?”*). It’s an 80” Sharp (LC80LE632U). It’s not meant to be the theater viewing device, just more of something to use so the lights can be turned up during any sort of entertaining or when the big screen doesn’t make sense (i.e. when I watch all those documentaries on the History Channel, or when my kids want to watch the Disney channel). As I said before, I really want my family to use the home theater room, especially together as a family.

More to follow….

Lots of updates will be coming but I wanted to wait until the updates included important pieces. Plus, I've been incredibly busy pulling about 3500 feet of various CAT cable, mostly shielded CAT6a which wasn't easy. How much I ruined I won't know for a while.... Thanks for following. Also, a lot of this was put on hold as we were on a marathon wait for inspections. It should be fast and furious now with the house and Home Theater over the next 4-8 weeks.
Edited by psychdoc - 8/12/12 at 6:52pm

Closet with lots of CAT6a



Each rack closet has a fan venting directly to the outside:


Edited by psychdoc - 9/13/12 at 1:36am

Out of order but oh well: just for comparison here are some pics from 2006 when we bought this overpriced 1864 sqft house:

What the outside used to look like:


Here is our old cramped kitchen. The new one starts in this area but is MUCH larger







This is now where the new kitchen island is


Staircase with original paint:

Here are some progress picks of the kitchen:

I was very busy...I painted everywhere:

I had lots of help...I think

The wife's walk-in closet taking shape;

New laundry room taking shape

This floor was all me... it actually is turning out top notch (slightly surprising I must admit):

Master bedroom nearing completion... with the amazing view of the mountains it's amazing!

I'll start posting more often now. On a side note my Fortress Seating for the Home Theater arrived a few weeks ago. I didn't have time (or the extra space) to unpack everything but the parts I looked at were amazing. I also unpacked my Sony projector (4K) and just had it throw an image on a the drapes and wall. It was surprisingly good. Who needs a screen with this thing? I'm still using my Stewart screen regardless but it was fun to play around with the thing. Since the rest of the house is nearing completion we'll start hitting the home theater hard in the coming days.

The walk-in closet taking the next step:

A final shot of 1/3 of the floor, one shot of the grout:
The master bathroom wraps around to the left between a very large walk-in shower opposing what will be two vanities and a jacuzzi bathtub. The floor turned out perfectly (smooth as glass and perfectly lined up and centered) but cutting all that stone took a while...

Edited by psychdoc - 9/14/12 at 12:37am

Thanks for the kind words BllDo and JonB. It's always nice to get feedback and thoughts of those out there.


Work continues on all parts of the house. It seems to never end. I finally pulled out the Stewart screen. Behind it you can see the box with the Sony 4K projector. A buddy of mine told me to get it up quickly as it would protect the screen. That was six months ago!!!! I hope it's alright:



The master bathroom takes another step forward:

Edited by psychdoc - 3/14/13 at 11:38pm

It's Funny you say that, Last week they were filming in a house down the street.

Work continues. We finally moved back in and started cleaning everything that had a thin layer of dirt sitting on top of it. Now that the house is finally closing in on completion I am starting to put more time into the home theater. I'll be placing the Kinetics "Isomax clips" in the coming days but I had to first tackle the area that the screen sits up into. Since it is a drop down screen there will always be a significant hole into the ceiling that will leak considerable sound to the floor above.

Here is the space with one of the blocks that supports the screen:



I was able to find a local company that had some "Acoustiblock" that is a thin 3mm layer but still a very heavy material that, when used in a standard wall correctly, is rated at 52 STC (quite impressive noise suppression). By itself I believe the STC rating of one layer is 21.

Here it is being loosely attached to the ceiling above the screen (you want it loosely being supported so sound isn't directly transmitted by contact)


But........being a true believer in overkill (which I know many in this hobby also believe in ) I didn't stop there...... I added two more layers lower in the cavity. Here is the second layer:


I added a total of three layers. Each one looked like a dome and was attached on the sides with an electric staple gun. All seams and holes were filled with acoustic caulking. Each layer was at a different level and did not touch the one above it. Finally, I lifted the Stewart Screen from its huge box with the help a family friend and the two of us climbed our ladders to install it. Warning....very stupid, do not try this at home. It was an instant workout and really is a three man job. I'm 6'5" 235 lbs and lift weights but trying to hold this huge thing up with one hand on top of a ladder and put in the small bolts was a workout to say the least!!! I wouldn't want to do that again!

Here it is:


Some of you might be thinking: why isn't it higher? The answer: it will be concealed within a soffit down the road.

The actual viewing screen is a total of 139" wide and the steel casing is just over 160". Here it is in 16:9 mode:


And here it is with the side masking pulled up into the ceiling (2.35):


Last night we watched Avengers (I pulled out some old equipment and my last set of speakers (Def Tech 2000TL) just to see what it's like...... one word: AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't do much work today.... watched some movies and my Patriots on the big screen.

Here is my Sony VW1000 (the 4K projector) on a makeshift table. The image is amazing and darn bright as well.

Edited by psychdoc - 10/8/12 at 2:29am

BllDo- Yes, it's very nice to be back in. Thanks! No matter how nice temporary lodging is someplace else, there is no place like home.

Hi Ted- I'm sure there are air pockets as I tried to make sure that each level of MLV didn't touch the level above or below it. I could have stuffed some insulation there but that would have been more than I'm shooting for. Three layers of MLV is enough.... (this portion isn't directly under the offset room above it so any remaining noise will just go outside which will be minimal anyway). I was shooting for beefing up the one weak spot in what should otherwise be a 61 STC room. I know there are plenty of different ways to skin this cat... just for curiosity, which way would you have gone to reduce the noise in that one weak spot?

A man who loves overkill more than me.... I love it! I have three layers..... how many would you use... 5? 6?

I agree. I'll be using 3/4" MDF and drywall on top of hat channel sitting on Isomax clips everywhere else except for the thin opening where the screen comes down. In that space above the screen is where all this MLV went. I was originally going to use plywood and sheetrock but the helpful people at Kinetics suggested MDF due to some problems with plywood resonating (I wanted a tough back wall to anchor things to). That being said, the amount of sound escaping through that slit should hopefully be handled by the three layers of MLV after it works its way through that very thick steel casing around the screen.