Building a Home Theater "Man Cave" with my Father-In-Law

So my father-in-law and I decided to start transforming his basement into a "Man Cave" fully equipped with a Pool Table, Wet Bar, and of course - Home Theater. We thought we would document out progress on here for others to check out and give suggestions along the way. This should be a pretty quick build as we are looking to christen it with a SuperBowl Party. I created a 3D mockup of what we would like the finished version to be as well as put the mockup images side by side with what it looks like today!

BEFORE AND AFTER









More To Come....

Wall Painting finished! Here is a couple of pictures that show the color.

Some more painting and drywalling completed today - see the pictures below!




Edited by citsur86 - 1/1/13 at 12:29pm

Thanks for the feedback. To answer your questions - the program is called Sweet Home 3D and it allows you to create a motion path and render a video from it. However, because that takes so long, I simply did a QuickTime screen capture of the preview walk through without ever actually rendering it at full quality.

Funny you mentioned the seating situation. Since I made the walk through, we decided to put the love seat under the window to create a better space for the pool table. Seating is about 10 feet from the screen. The projector can go up to 120" but no without some light wash. It's a 500 lumen LED projector. We thought 90" would provide a good picture in all light. Think we would be ok at 100"?

I'll have some more picture tomorrow showing our progress.

Got a little bit done this weekend. Painted some of the ceiling tiles and rehung, moved the light above the pool table to it's new home:

Some good progress. Just some more ceiling painting to do and cleanup! Oh and the bar still has to be built.

The man cave / home theater is complete in time for the big Super Bowl party today. Just doing some last minute cleanup, then I will have some pictures for you here! Stay tuned because it looks incredible.

Here are some pictures.

Thanks! The room lighting is split on two remote controlled switches so that the lights can be turned off and on through the harmony remove were using (Harmony Touch). The TV behind the bar is a split signal coming off the receiver so whatever is on the main projector screen also plays on the bar TV. That was great for the large Super Bowl party we had yesterday.

Only issue we can't figure out is that the projector will occasionally go black for 3-5 seconds and come back of saying Found along with the resolution. We know its not the cable box because when this happens the bar TV picture is still showing. We also know its not the HDMI coming off the splitter going to the Projector because we switched the cable out HD it didn't happen. I have an inkling that it has something to do with the projector settings or an issue with the projector. Also, it only does this when watching comcast? Not when watching Apple TV Bluray. Any ideas?

I've read about the handshake issue. I just don't know how to fix it. I have the cable box set to output 720p which is also the resolution of the TV. The projector displays up to 1080p. Do you have any suggestion on how I can setup the resolutions to avoid this issue? Also would the EDID doctor be connected going from Cable box to receiver, or coming off the receiver, going to the splitter IN, or coming off the splitter OUT to the projector?

Just read this, think it could help?

Correcting a hand shake problem
Disconnect the source devices HDMI cable from the AVR and from the AVR to the HDTV. If the HDMI cable is routed from the source device directly to the HDTV disconnect the HDMI cable from the HDTV. Wait 10 to 20 minutes then reconnect the HDMI cables. IMPORTANT! Power up the AVR and HDTV completely before the source device. In most instances this should resolve the hand shake issue.

Preventing a hand shake issue from re-occurring
To prevent future hand shake issues ensure the AVR is fully powered up before the source device (sat recvr, cable box, etc.). If the HDMI cable is routed directly from the source device to the HDTV ensure the HDTV is fully powered up.

Better yet power up your AV devices in the following sequence - HDTV, AVR then cable box or satellite receiver. This process is very simple if powering up manually. When using a remote you can achieve the same result by programing in power up time delay for the source device.

Read more: Correcting & preventing HDMI hand shake problems - Home Theater Forum and Systems - HomeTheaterShack.com

Can't say we were below budget, but we were right on it. With a lot of elbow grease and hard work, all of that cost right around $2500. However, my father-in-law does have some family members who helped out for free (nephew is a millworker and put the bar up for us at no cost). Couches were from the main living room and new ones were purchased in their place. Bar TV was extra from storage. We have a few last details to do, such as put a riser between the carpet and hardwood and put trim around the newly placed drywall but Thanks! Once we get the HDMI Handshake issues taken care of and those things, everything will be done!