The Stonewater Cinema Build Thread - Page 2

The masking system simply hangs down and falls free, so it is not in a channel. I am not sure how close the masking system gets to the screen material itself because I don't have and have not installed the screen material from Seymour yet. I will be keen to find out the questions to this myself. But no matter what, the engineering was done by Stewart Filmscreen, so I am sure whatever spacing they have there is a very specific reason.

The masking system uses Somfy motors, but not the completely silent ones. They are quiet, but you would think for a $19,000 screen at full retail that they would have the best available components. I guess the dumb luck I came across is that all but 1-2" of the top of the screen frame will be recessed into my soffit so that will definitely kill most of the noise when the panels are going up or down.

Glad to have you subscribed. I thought I was the only one who really liked the Art Deco look but apparently I am very mistaken from all the interest. I really would like yours and everyone else's opinion if all the Art Deco elements I put together are cohesive. There is also some custom metalwork I will be having fabricated for which I am a bit wandering on the design.

One thing is for sure....you'd better be well-stocked with buckets of Green Glue and sealant because the big order is coming your way shortly. After you and I talked, I bit the bullet and bought enough 5/8" drywall to do two layers on the underside of my first floor subfloor (between the joists in the ceiling theater) to quell the footfall noise. Between this soundproofing addition and my decision to go the extra mile and use Green Glue in between double layers on the soffit to surround the mechanical systems that are not movable, make noise and need to be dealt with.

Fair warning - when I post some pics of the room I know you will latch onto a triple leaf situation I have going on with the one side of the theater and the stairwell, but it's too late to really change it. Maybe you have a work-around suggestion. To any extent, I'm glad to have you along for the ride!
Edited by TMcG - 11/30/12 at 11:56am

Thanks! This is our first child and we found out just last week that we will be having a boy. No name yet, but we are compiling a short list.

As I said in your thread, you are still CEO of MIH (Makin' It Happen) with your determination to tackle your incredible theater with such great detail in design, planning and execution. But you are right - I have a VERY high motivation to keep the pressure on and get things done. I don't know if you saw in another post, but like a lot of these basement theater builds, I am concurrently finishing the basement, as you can see from all the construction materials in my projection screen photos.

I was happy to throw a little advice your way and I certainly look forward to some advice from you as I go through the process. I am sure there is a thousand different things for which I will need to poll advice from your expertise and the forum on how to accomplish.

Thanks for subscribing and following along. I'll try my best to live up to your expectations of this thread!!

Tjenare Nightlord! Hur gör du?

I had never heard of Steampunk before, but after a quick search I see where the two styles would overlap. But I have to say I don't think the Art Deco style has any Steampunk Robot Zombie Nazis!

I haven't bought the fixture yet because I am not at that stage and it would be something more to trip over or move out of my way 10,000 times until I needed it. It's a done deal, though.

First brews will probably be Yuengling and this incredible microbrew my neighbor makes. He has the system to put it in a five gallon keg, but the stuff is so "hoppy" you have to practically finish the whole thing in just a couple of weeks before it goes bad. (oh, darn)

Thanks Chris. I'll see what I can do over this weekend. I did a fairly deep-level cleaning and organization, but I am very close to getting everything installed for rough electrical inspection. After that I get a bit of a break as I am hiring a drywall crew to come in and knock everything out but the theater, which I will be doing myself.

I'm still having a bit of trouble getting my plans converted into something that Photobucket (and this forum) can show correctly and be legible, but one of the first plans will give you a total overview of the entire basement, including the location of the theater. I know the glimpses you see may not look like much, but when you are one guy working on 1800 square feet of totally unfinished basement and travel a lot for work, things tend to move more slowly.

Thanks for subscribing and following along. Looking forward to your comments and feedback as I go through the process.

Hey RT! Thanks for stopping by. You are right, I could probably fill a small library with PMs and good-natured ribbing in posts about my "non-link" link. But hey - I sincerely hope to make it worth the wait.

And don't worry, I have plenty of pictures to post and to catch up this thread to match the current status. Over the course of the weekend I will post my plans / blueprints, how the room started and the various phases of construction work I accomplished in the theater by this point, which is not much. Once I run out of pictures to post, I will definitely be on the hook for actual progress pics instead of history pics!

You are correct - that hard deadline (currently April 19th) will be here before I know it. I have a sinking feeling (know) that my travel schedule is really going to get crazy after the first of the year, making my time at home to work on the theater all the more limited. Most of the progress will therefore be in the next two months and then I think I will have to start mainlining crystal methamphetamine to tackle theater construction at a more aggressive pace, given the relative handful of days I am home here and there starting in February.

It's a very good thing you are here....I have some carpet selections which need the professional advice of a certified carpet counselor!!

Hey Gerben - thanks for subscribing! As you may have read, I hired Dennis Erskine and Quest Acoustics to make the most of your Procella speakers. Until now, I have NEVER bought any speaker on reputation alone. But the positive - almost fanatical - feedback was too much to ignore so I decided to make the investment. I have three P610s for the LCR and six P6s for the sides (two pairs) and rears. I would absolutely love to have dual P15 subwoofers to complete the full Procella system, but it was a stretch to buy what I did and the subwoofers were unfortunately too far out of budget.

Funny story . . . My wife and I had discussed what I was budgeting for a new speaker system, but I wasn't fully through the negotiation process (husbands, you know what I mean). I jumped the gun a bit by buying this speaker system when I had the right opportunity. I figured that I could set the speakers aside after they were delivered and slowly conclude the negotiation process...plus it would give me some time to work in a few nice dinners (husbands - again, you know what I mean). As misfortune would have it....when UPS dropped off all the speakers it happened to be on a day that my wife was home sick. Thankfully she was in bed resting at the time, but let's just say if she saw the HUGE pile of new speakers outside before she had a chance to digest my revised speaker budget, the "Procella Effect" would have taken on a completely different meaning!!! I almost never keep her in the dark about anything, especially a large purchase. But she knew I had been thinking about (and budgeting for) this system for the last six years. She is just as excited for me to get the theater up and running for us to use, so all is well.
Edited by TMcG - 12/6/12 at 1:43am

I really like your PVC and lumber haulers / returners! Really sharp and probably the fastest deliveries in all of New Jersey!


I am going with the built-in undercounter system with the permanent dual tap tower mounted through the countertop. A remote system would be nice, but unless you are continuously pouring at a party or something, you waste a lot of beer just flushing the lines to get to the cold stuff. When I get to that stage in a month or so I'll be sure to post some pics.

Thanks James. Glad to have you following along. I've said it before, but I will try to live up to everyone's expectations and end up with the level of theater I envision.
Edited by TMcG - 12/6/12 at 1:44am

OK, finally time to put some meat on the bone with this build thread. First, as much as I want to have a fancy set of digital drawings - either CAD, Sketch-UP or renderings - the simple fact of the matter is that I cannot share the CAD drawings produced for me by Erskine Group without permission, I decided not to spend the $600 - $1000 it was going to cost to have the room rendered, and after tinkering around in Sketch-Up for a couple of hours I realized that it was going to take far more commitment to learn this program to develop useful drawings than I wanted to spend. Aside from wasting time learning a program I would likely never use again, there would have been duplication of effort once I hired Dennis since he would be developing CAD drawings. Perhaps at some point I can post a redacted CAD drawing similar to what others have posted, but I don't have anything at the moment.

That being said, I am sharing my original hand drawings that I cranked out roughly to scale in a single afternoon a couple of months ago as a basis for my design. For each drawing there are items that have changed which I will describe in each photo's caption. I never went back with an eraser and edited the drawings simply because it was not worth the effort, for example, to redraw all of the seating and riser base to move everything forward 4 inches.

The ceiling plan. Changes include:

• Riser base extends all the way to the right side wall instead of being symmetrical
• Perimeter soffit not shown
• Curved baffle wall replaced with straight baffle wall and curved screen wall
• 4" of Acoustic treatments as noted for the back wall were not going to happen. Acoustic treatments for the room tentatively planned with 2" Quest panels, budget allowing.
• Infinite Baffle manifolds are being changed to arrays and repositioned
• Seating is being moved slightly forward to get the side speakers for both rows in the 100 degree to 110 degree range
• Curve of screen is exacerbated vs. reality. Curve is more gentle.

The front elevation. Changes include:

• Top of the screen frame will be recessed into the soffit to improve site lines for the second row of seating
• Sand-filled proscenium eliminated as IB chamber will be built
• IB subwoofers will be 2 x 18" Fi Car Audio subwoofers in 2 arrays, positioned approximately under the left and right speakers

Side elevations in mirror image from front to back. Changes include:

• P6 speaker in rear side column have been elevated to the top of the column
• Acoustic panels have been specified for surface mounting on the door
• Chair rail height has been slightly lowered by Dennis Erskine to increase recommended acoustic treatment surface area at ear height above the chair rail

Rear elevation. Changes include:

• Speakers elevated to the top of the columns
• Riser base extended all the way to the right wall (left side of the drawing)

Front screen edge detail sketch (done in less than 5 minutes and NOT to scale) Comments:

• Art Deco detail is not shown and will be added to the curved part of the columns
• "Baffle wall" should actually read "Screen wall"
• Not to scale, but each "column" has about 6.5" wide expoure to the room. Actual construction details shown, but subject to revision when I get to that stage.

One of my original ideas was to "float" the acoustic panels above the chair rail about an inch off the wall to either create a shadow line or to back-illuminate the panels with a LED lighting. This design feature may or may not happen as I still have to do some thinking about it. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. I am fairly committed to the gentle curve on the tops of the panels - a bit more expensive from a panel molding perspective, but worth the price for the decorative detail IMHO.

Next up....some pics of the room as it stood a month or so ago.
Edited by TMcG - 12/6/12 at 6:36am

Thanks Nick. The whole design is optimized for the second row of seating - everything else gets what it gets. According to Dennis' CAD, the seating distance to the front row with a more narrow IB chamber at the front of the theater is about 10' 6". The second row of seating is at 17' from the screen. The back bar will be very narrow at 12" in depth and have stools that tuck underneath. There is approximately 4.5 feet between the back row of seats and the back of the room. Essentially I am treating these as the "Hey buddy, just be thankful you have a seat in this theater"...seats!! I may eliminate the back bar, but I'll have to see how things feel once the riser is constructed and I break out the trusty 'ol blue tape to mark everything out.

To achieve 4x VAS of physcial space, the front of the baffle wall only needs to be 1'6" off the front of the theater wall. So I am not losing as much room as I originally planned for in these drawings. Elimination of the manifold configuration in favor of an array configuration really allowed me to push the baffle wall back toward the front wall without the 24" deep boxes the manifolds require. I know I am splitting hairs, but every inch counts. I know, I know...that's what she said.

Although it is on the drawing, I forgot to specifically mention some critical details - the dimensions of the room! The room is 16' 5" wide, 22' 3.5" deep and 8' 10" from floor to the underside of the joists. all drywall and soundproofing activities will deduct from these dimensions. All dimensions are from face of theater framing to face of framing.

And FWIW, this was just to get the layout of the room in good shape - all of the individual Art Deco finishing details will be shown when I go to plan each of the finishing elements. I have quite a few posts to catch up on regarding these details. For some reason I cannot seem to upload photos of the room....I have a post ready to go, but the upload is stalling out for some reason. I will have to try again later today when I am on my home PC. More to come. Cheers!