SeveredDime's General Theater Room

While the second coat of flat black paint dries on the screen wall I though I would take the time to document my progress thus far. Before we get to far it might be worth mentioning that this is a very family friendly budget minded build, no high end gear here

Hardware:
AVR - Pioneer VSX-1325
BR - Pioneer BDP-330
X-Box

Speakers:
LCR - Monoprice MSQ-8425
L/R Surround - Monoprice - MSQ-870-1Y
Wides ( if I install them ) - Monoprice - MSQ-870-1Y
L/R - Surround Rear - MST-825A

Projector:
Epson 8500 UB

Room Size:
24'x26' with 7'2" ceilings

Sound Proofing:
Zero, ziltch, nada. For one the basement was already completed ( although horribly ) when we bought the house and second, the stair well is completely open to the main floor so there was no point.

There is a 265 Gallon fish tank in the room as well, it's located opposite the screen wall. When I mentioned this to people in the past I can see them cringe. While it's not ideal acoustically to have a big glass surface directly behind us, that's a compramise I'm willing to make.

On to the pictures, because words are boring!

This is basically how the room started out, save for the striped paint expiriment my wife tried on the advice of a decorator, I didn't like it and never quite finished it.


Fast forward to my nice sheet screen, we were having people over and my wife wanted to watch UFC and play XBox on a big screen


After a while I built an actual screen using Seymour AV material with a home made frame. I'm ashamed to admit that the room stayed like this for far too long.:



Then came another repaint to a Chocolate Fondue color that I didn't complete. The dark color really exagerated how horribly the basement had been built. it looks like they crowned the studs in/out/in/out there was no care taken at all. So that's how things sat.


Fast forward some more and we were expecting our first child - or should I say children, my wife was pregnant with twins, so understandably things didn't progress at all.

We still used the room to watch the occasional TV show or movie, until the bulb went in the projector. It was at that time I decided to pull everything down and redo it properly ( or as close to it as we could afford ) Again, we were too busy with the kids so the room NEVER got used.

I had some holidays to burn up so my wife wanted me to use them up to get the theater back up and running so she could use it during the long winter. I had to make some sacrafices along the way, IE: the in wall speakers, but they make it safe to the kids to run around and play without me having to worry about them getting damaged or worse having one fall over and hurt one of the kids.

The first thing I did was rotate the room 90 degrees, it always felt weird to have our backs to the staircase.

Rehung the projector:


Cut holes in the walls, and run speaker wire, here's how bad the basement is constructed, the vapor barrier is not sealed at the top of that bulk head so I'm not sure why they even bothered to put it in there. so running
the wires in that wall was actually pretty easy, ran my tape up the wall and it popped out over my head.


Painted the LCR frames and covers. I have to redo one of the covers, I'm not sure what was on it to have it turn out like that.



Installed the side surrounds ( temporarily, they aren't tightened down, they need to come out to refinish the wall.



Installed and wired the rear surrounds:



Painted the area behind the screen black ( Still wet )



In order to get around the wall issues with out tearing everything out and redoing, I decided to panel the bottom of the wall to match the cabinets already in the room and use textured wallpaper on the top half. Here is the paper I'll be using, I'm uneducated on such things and didn't think it would take two to three weeks to get the wallpaper so I won't be getting it done during my week off.


I bought some theater chairs of a local buy/sell sight for a pretty good deal, four seats, brown leather, powered recliners in brand new condition. I don't have a picture of them at the moment, they are in the garage until the room is ready for them.

i guess that's it for now

Thanks, I like/ed the color but it just showed to many flaws in the walls and it just didn't look good. I tried to take a picture down the length of the long wall but it didnt turn out well. I like having the large room, there's a ton of room for people but a pain to wire, I think I'm up around 600 feet of wire in the room for speakers and the hdmi cables.

I did have a question,

I wired for wides, which I know are supposed to be on the same plain as th LCR's. How much tolerance is there in that? I can't run them at the same level due to the paneling to come. If I could raise them 6-8" I could make it work, if that's a bad idea I would probably skip them.

Got the front speakers installed and wired today:


Built a frame for the AT material:


Mounted the material with Binder Clips, it works very well:

Does anyone have any thoughts on the wides?

Thanks!

I might be hard to for me to explain, I'm going to be matching the look of the cabinets in the back of the room with paneling around the room, which would run right through the wides if they were placed at the same level as the LCR's. My AVR does do room correction, I wanted to be sure I wasn't wasting my time if I were to place them 6/8 inches higher than the LCR's

There are no backer boxes behind them at this time, all the walls down there are outside walls which are stuffed full of insulation and vapor barrier.

Thanks Jason

I was more concerned about the position of the front wides. My rears are in-ceiling speakers I've already mounted and wired. I'm sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for your help Dan.

I painted the speakers as well as the grills with spray paint. I used several very light coats, probably 5 or 6. Seemed to work out pretty well.

Jason,

Correct, I was thinking the vertical placement.

I've read through your thread multiple times, I really like the bar you built behind your seating. Something I might have to steal for a future upgrade.

I use to use some older Sony towers as my mains and they were fairly heavy, I couldn't imagine one of them falling on the kids. Ours are only a month behind yours so I can sympathize with having an 18 month old running around the house.

Deal, but only with the waiver that I'm far from being a critical listener. I've had my old speakers since I was about 13 years old and they've lived a hard life, ( I regret that rap phase in life ) anything should be a step-up at this point.

Like Jason, I do have some expirence with the in-ceilings, they replaced some Infinity bookshelves. I used four for my side a rear surrounds when the room was set-up the other way and I found them to be superior to the bookshelves. The sound was a little localized for my taste but that was due to my install limitations and had nothing to do with the speakers themselves.

I made a pretty stupid mistake when I was building the screen... When I took all the measurements for projector placement and screen size I did it against the wall, the screen actually sits four inches from the wall when finished and I'm out of zoom. I have a bit of room to move the projector back but not four inches. I think when I build the velvet frame around the screen I'll make it overlap the screen by what ever the difference is, it shouldn't be much.

Good morning,

Nothing much to report picture wise, just waiting on some ordered material to show up. My wallpaper arrived this morning so I need to go pick that up some time today. I picked up some lumber to start making trim yesterday, I have A LOT of cutting, routing and sanding in my future.

Are there any wood workers or finishers in the house? The cabinets in the room are made of Alder, which isn't readily available in my area, on the advice of the employee at the store I went with Aspen. It seemed to have the same grain and overall look of Alder, we'll see what happens when the stain goes on.

They don't have aspen available in sheets to make the back panels of the wainscoting out of, can anyone suggest a wood to use? Birch, Polar etc?

Thanks!

Just a small update today,

I've been held up severly due to stain matching, I had to take my samples to three different stores to find one that could reasonably match the color of the existing cabinets in the room. They've done the best they can, it's pretty hard to match a spray stain.

The two trim pieces have one coat on them, the one is a tad blotchy, I may sand that one and redo it, the 4" peice has two coats and still needs to be top coated. I also got started on one of the columns today, I still need to trim it and route it.

Spent some time getting the first column trimmed out, still need to route and sand it though.

I'm pretty happy with the way they are turning out.