The Small Time Theater Build

So I've been missing my dedicated basement room (construction thread) for almost two years now and I stumbled on a deal on a Panny 7000 that I just couldn't pass up...so, here we go with me trying to shoe-horn some sort of movie watching venue into a landing area at the top of my stairs .

It will be nothing like my previous three (yes, three) builds but, hopefully, will cure the itch for a while. I will have the 7000 firing onto a 115" diagonal 2.35:1 screen in a CIH setup. I'm not going to use my Panamorph (which I still have) this time as the Panny has a great feature to automatically zoom 2.35 content and it seems to work very well.

Here is the area I'm going to convert






Wish me luck...

The dimensions of the area are roughly 12 x 16 1/2 but the rear of it opens to basically the whole rest of the house - both up and downstairs. Therefore, I'm not even going to attempt to do anything acoustically like I've done in the past. One, I think it would be mostly futile, two, my neighbor's house is about 15 feet away from that window wall so I can't get too crazy with the sound no matter what I do and, three, I want to be able to easily revert this area to "normal" use if I need to when I sell the house.

So, the first order of business is that window. The plan is to build a false wall right in front of it. This will do a couple of things for me. It will seal off the light from the window and it will give me at least some both extra sound barrier to next door and absorption possibility for the room itself.

First, a little cover up for the window itself.



I tacked a sheet up first just to protect the blinds and frame from the stuff I put next which is some left over 2" OC 703. Then, a couple of moving pads over that.

The false wall itself will be framed basically "friction-fit" into the area - right on top of the carpet.



It goes right against the existing baseboard so I need a little spacer block in the top corners.



Now, just a few screws in the corners and the whole wall will be easily removable with minimal patches required.

There will be no solid surface on the false wall (other than the screen). My primary goal with this is to 1) cover the window in a manner that makes it easy and aestetically pleasing to mount the screen and 2) provide a bit of sound absorption within the space. There are so many holes acoustically in the layout that any attempt at sound isolation would be futile in my opinion.

Here is the false wall fully framed in place.



I did standard 16" centers so that I could easily install normal insulation for some minor absorption on the screen wall.



Then I also installed some blocking for mounting the screen and some side curtains.

Simultaneously, I'm building some combination movie poster/sound absorbers in this basic style. Got my fabric prints from spoonflower - which happens to be very near me so shipping was quick.

Here is my basic frame under construction



And with the OC 703 cut and fit inside



A close-up of the frame construction



Then Iron the fabric and staple it in place.



I made four of them. Two for each side wall. Total cost < $100

Okay, so next is fabric for the front wall. I had a bit of an issue here because 1) I was cheap (trying to do this on a very limited budget this time) and 2) I was impatient. I found a perfect fabric at Hancock but they only had 7yds of it and it was during the Labor Day sale so it was 60% off just for that weekend.

I needed a full 8yds to be able to put two runs across the entire wall and only have a single seam that would be 90% hidden by the screen itself. But, if I cut out some of the middle portion of the fabric that would be concealed by the screen anyway, I could cover the rest of the wall - albeit with a couple more seams. I had planned on maybe having some side curtains anyway so this situation sealed it. Side curtains would conceal the additional seams and I wouldn't even have to pay any attention to making them nice.

The fabric is a "Linen-Look" that wasn't too stretchy and looks great for this application.

Lower part of the wall with the cut-out portions applied to the sides:



And with the upper run as well. You can see where I cut out from both runs to fill in the sides of the lower part:



Then a simple run of pre-finished moldings and I have a finished front wall.

Okay, along with the wall and the poster absorbers, I'm also building a simple sealed sub for the new area.

When I moved from the last house, I couldn't bear to leave behind the whole entire beast of a sub I built as I knew it would never be appreciated. So, I took out two of the drivers from the monster under the screen and brought them with me - just in case I got a chance to use them again. Here's where they came from:



So, I'm taking one of those and mounting it in a simple box that fits the dimensions of the space I need to put it in. it will go beside an existing cube-type shelf system that will span the bottom of the screen wall - holding the electronics and speakers. The left channel will sit on the sub.

Here is the completed box. As I said, extremely simple construction including the internal bracing.



Built from 3/4" material I had left over and veneered with 1/4" ply for staining. I didn't even have to cut out the face plate because i brought that with me too .

The internal volume ended up about 4.5 cuft which appears to be what people shoot for with drivers like this. It is not going to move the whole building like the last incarnation, but I think it will do just fine. Especially for the few bucks it cost me to build it.

For the projector, I had bought a ceiling mount but found that the lens shift on the Panny was enough to be able to mount it on a shelf to the side above a closet that is right at the top of the stairs. This is much better because it is basically hidden from below instead of hanging right in the middle of everything. It took me a while to get the lens shift and lens memory to work properly together but I eventually got it.



Eventually, I'll route those cables through the wall but they are pretty much hidden right now so I'm in no rush.

And... The finished product. Not quite what I had before but I am very pleased with how this came out. The picture is great (the screen is actually bigger than my dedicated room) and the sound is actually quite surprisingly good. I'm especially impressed with what my quick and dirty sub build can put out.

Before:



After:

Thanks. The pictures are poor and don't really do it justice. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The space even looks bigger than it did before.

I'm using one of my left over amps from the old room for the sub. It is a QSC 1450. Not really enough to drive it to its full potential but enough for this application.