Swizzle Stick Theater - Page 2

One of the remaining items to complete the theater has been to install a new door "knob" for the much thicker door. The original 1.5" thick door has been augmented by a 1" thick framed fabric panel on the theater side of the door. When the door is closed, this permits the "Swizzle Stick" GOM fabric pattern from the wall to also extend across the door, making the closed door "disappear."

Since all the other doors in the house uses stainless steel levers instead of knobs (IMHO, levers are much more practical), it made sense to have a matching lever on the door to the home theater.

I ordered a "thick door" kit to try and extend the Schlage Elan lever originally installed in the door, but it didn't work -- the Schlage kit only extends a maximum of 2 1/4 inches, while my door w/fabric panel is now 2 1/2 inches thick.

So I was forced to order an entirely new lever set from Emtek -- a Poseidon model lever, built specifically for a 2 1/2 inch door.

After it arrived I discovered a problem. Emtek assumed the latch bolt assembly would be installed equidistant from each side of the thick door. However for my home theater door, the latch bolt needed to be installed off-set to the outside of the door, away from the 1" thick fabric-covered panel and centered in the original latch bolt hole. The internal shaft/spindle attached to one of the handles was too long.

Fortunately it was possible to hack-saw a 1/2" length off of one of the spindles to make the the new lever set fit:




Now the only remaining issue is that the privacy feature -- which makes it possible to lock the door to keep people out of the theater -- doesn't work since the threaded locking pin provided with the lever set is at least 1/2" too short. It needs to be longer to extend through the framed fabric panel side of the door. However, I think I can create my own solution (after a next trip to the hardware store) by cutting a long 6-32 bolt to size. This became an issue only because the latch bolt assembly is off-set rather than centered in the 2 1/2 inch wide door.

After BIG built this frame, I told him I always wanted to have the first home theater with a screen door.

Yeah, I'm old enough that our phone number growing up was UNiversity 4 6028, and yes, it was also a party line so my parents could save money.

Years ago when I came home on break from college and secretly hooked up an "illegal" extension to the line (remember, the phone company used to charge extra each month for each extension) it apparently screwed up operation of the party line so that long distance calls accidentally got charged to the other party.

Of course we wouldn't admit that we had an extension when the phone company called us on it, so they parked one of their trucks out front of the house as a form of intimidation. My parents relented and ripped out the extension right after I went back to college.

After waiting 5 weeks, the four custom Nailor grilles to cover the HVAC supply (x2) and return (x2) openings in the theater soffit finally arrived!

The good news is the linear bar grilles are exactly what I ordered, in the 6 by 36 inch size that actually fits the soffit openings. The bad news is that the 1 inch flanges surrounding the grilles don't quite cover many of the staples we used to secure the GOM black fabric to the wood frame surrounding the soffit openings -- some staples are located too far away from the opening.

So I'm going to see if my wimpy electric stapler will work with the relatively soft wood around the ducts (not MDF) to put in some new staples, and then remove some of the offending original staples BIG and I put in using his pneumatic stapler. Otherwise I may have to get BIG to come back with his air compressor and industrial-strength staple gun.

Yes, the aluminum grilles have a flat black finish (I lightened up the pictures) to match the black GOM fabric on the underside of the soffits, and to reduce the potential for light reflection back to the screen.

When ordering the grilles, I had the option of getting them in standard white or aluminum color -- and then personally applying black spray paint to try and cover all sides of the louvers without drips or runs, or paying a bit more for Nailor to paint the grilles black. I chose the latter.

For the soffit openings near the front of the theater, yes, the grilles will be about 3-4 feet from the screen.

Thought of that, but the installation will be neater with the staples hiding under the grille flanges. Jeff (BIG) did such a nice job with the fabric that I need to maintain his high standards.

Our two 6 by 36 HVAC supply openings are located in the side soffits near the front corners of the the room, well ahead of the first row of seating. Since cold air sinks, in the summer this keeps cold air from settling directly on anyone in the chairs.

The two identically-sized 6 by 36 inch return openings are located in the rear soffit, flanking the projector. This removes much of the projector exhaust before it can heat the room.

Supply and return openings are each serviced by 6" diameter flexible (and insulated for acoustics) ducts located entirely within the soffits. Up in the soffit these connect to rectangular ducts that penetrate the wall to the adjacent equipment room, which contains a geothermal heat pump as well as the rack containing all the home theater equipment. Because the double drywall is penetrated up in the soffit, sound leakage is minimized.

The home theater is one of two zones running off of that heat pump, so the theater has its own thermostat on the wall.
Edited by uberanalyst - 7/7/12 at 9:35am

For "service after the sale," you can rely on BIG.

Jeff was nice enough to come back for a visit, bringing his industrial-strength stapler and air compressor. He spent about an hour putting in a new row of staples around each of the 4 HVAC openings -- much closer to the openings than the original staples we installed to hold the GOM black fabric to the underside of the soffits.

Since then I've (carefully, without ripping the black fabric) removed more than 100 of the original staples -- just the ones that were too far outside of the new HVAC grilles. After I installed the grilles you don't see any staples:

I'm sure what BIG meant was the last item I need to totally finish the theater: At each corner of the theater on the bottom surface of the soffits, there are still staples showing where we had to join the pieces of black GOM cloth diagonally.

I haven't yet figured out the best way to hide these seams and staples -- although it will likely include strips of more black GOM cloth.

I've been having more fun lately automating the theater: I finally figured out how to connect an infrared emitter 100' to the opposite corner of the basement where the Lutron Homeworks whole-house lighting control system has a spare IR sensor mounted on a contact closure board. After reprogramming the Lutron system to define some more lighting "scenes" for the theater, combined with adding the appropriate additional commands to the Logitech Harmony remote, selecting various activities in the theater (e.g., "play Blu-ray", "watch Tivo") now turns on the appropriate lighting scene; turning off the system brings up the lights, etc.

Then to make it even more interesting, I installed the Roomie remote app on multiple iPhone/iPad devices. Combined with a IP2IR (IP network to infrared) repeater, and an infrared blaster mounted in front of a pre-existing IR sensor in my equipment rack, I can now also control everything via WiFi from a spare (obsolete) iPhone 3GS used as a remote control. Roomie is really slick and very intuitive to use -- even easier to setup than a Logitech Harmony remote. And with Roomie I can control my Tivo HD via IP/Ethernet rather than via infrared, resulting in much more positive and rapid control action when fast forwarding thru commercials, for example.