Cinema Sarah small 12x15 home theatre build

wow you guys have done great jobs and certainly have given me alot to think about.....heres my story...my older boys have moved out so the "weight room" in the 'daylight basement" ( 1/2 above ground) is getting studs and drywall and will become a small dedicated HT room, this is a lower cost build that has a longer time frame and in part is being used as a motivational tool for my new high school student, the good study habits and attitude will be rewarded with additions to the room like furniture and posters etc...we are not really focused on grades just attitude and effort.

the room is 12x15 with a center height of 8' 6" with two 3' wide 7'6" high chases down the sides, the door is on the side wall at the back of the room and I have one large window on the back wall . All the work is being done by myself and my sons/daughters. I decided on 4 wall sconces and no over head lights. I have 70% of the dry wall done. tonight we do a trial run will set up the projector on the cieling mount and set up the AV recvr and speakers to make sure i have a system lay out that works before i drywall the cieling. my plan at the moment is to use a small stand for all the AV equipment below the screen. right now everything is set up on a table in the family room and even just projecting on the yellow family room wall its impressive.

Equipment so far : Epson 8350 projector, and Onyko ht-s5400 HTiB, epson universal cieling mount and peerless vibration dampening mount, DVD/gaming through an xb360, Comcrap cable box.

this is my 4th child and the only one left at home and I have decided its easier overall to pull the kids over to the concept of rewarding good behavior and for doing well. After all that really is what makes a person successful in life, and fortunately this is with in the budget if i space it our over a 3-6 month time period.

the trial run went well and I was able to cover that south facing window with blinds and a dark curtain. this made it dark enough during full daylight to watch the lord of the rings trilology. in fact I think i had an over dose of the movies... I watched all three on saturday as I played with the system. one funny thing did happen though, I was telling my wife about the whisper clips and the metal hat channel and she basically said "come on what are you doing just put insulation in and drywall it after all there are only 3 of us at home now". Well during one part of the movie there was a heavy door moving and the sub woofer was pounding and my wife who was upstairs thought we were having an earth quake. I think then she got the idea of how important some basic sound proofing concepts can be.

I am still listening to see where the sounds are coming into and exiting the room and coming up with a plan for dealing with it. the only unexpected noise is from the external AC unit on the heat pump when it cycles it self i can hear that. i wonder if they make weather proof sound dampening material for outside applications?

the projector mount seems to be perfect, it is mounted far enough back against the wall that it is actually under the kitchen cabinets and even with the older kids screwing with me by tapping on the hard wood floors upstairs the projector did not bounce or move at all. i did mount it on plywood spanning two joists and used the peerless vibration dampening mount.

modifications: I do need to move the AC receptacle to better match the power cord placement. luckily I anticipated this and left extra romex up there to accomodate this

Landshark nice build and you did a great job keeping it a friendly space. I hope mine turns out as nice! bob

well we have used it every night to watch movies or TV shows, the projector has not moved or vibrated so i know the location is pretty good. we need to tweak the curtain plan a little more maybe to have an inner and outter curtain. the sound system is more the adequate for thw size of the room and even just using the gray drywall the picture is impressive. definitley need to work on the sound insulation in the room. we need to spend some time on the backside of the screen wall to block the washer/dryer, HVAC system noise. I will post more pictures as i work on that area.

heres the mock up of the projector mount and curtain treatment

Ii wanted to experiment with a painted screen so i used the flat Behr silver screen self priming paint over a freshly primed surface . I figured it was a no lose proposition since if i didnt like the silver screen product i could get it tinted and use it as the primer for the walls. I was impressed with the gray screen i am not sure if I am 100% happy with the flat paint but we are in the right ball park. the gray does seem to work very well the ambient day light that we have in the room. now back to finishing the drywall....

well the proof of concept worked so i pulled everything out and now we are back to finsihing the drywall. we decided to go with just insulation and drywall. the boss pointed out that there was only 3 of us in the house and the extra noise control stuff just wasnt needed. i figured this was one argument i could rollover on since if the nosie hasnt bothered her during the proof of concept stage with an open cieling then we were good to go....its kind of funny we are all missing the big screen and watching football on the regular TVs just wasnt as much fun.

well the painting is done!!! the room is set up with a sectional and it is quite a comfortable room for watching movies. the audysey sound set up microphone worked well and i am impressed with how the sound is as well as the picture quality. currently the 7.1 is set up with rear high speakers but i may try the front high speakers next time i want to play around some more with the sound. next item is the wall sconces and then some carpeting