Building the Summit Theater

And here we go again.
First off, thanks to everyone who helped in my prior theater build, and in planning this one.
Next week my wife and I start construction on our basement, which will include a dedicated theater room.
To start, the plans:










The theater room will be 28'x13'. There will be 2 rows of seating, with the back row being on a riser, and likely an eating bar or a tall table behind the back row for overflow seating and/or a place to put food. I will have a 110" AT screen (or somewhere thereabouts), with all the speakers hidden behind. Side and rear speakers will be housed in some sort of columns. Likely a 7.1 or 7.2 system. AV rack will be located in a separate room, past the wet bar.
Room construction will be attempting to achieve sound isolation. Exterior walls will be regular 2x4 studded walls, connected to ceiling with IB3 clips. Interior wall is staggered stud and IB3. Ceiling will be Whisper clips and hat channels. walls and ceilings will be double drywall and green glue, all outlets putty padded, and the 6 canned lights will have boxes made with 2 layers of OSB, green glue, and IB3 clips to attach.
And then there's that giant elephant in the room... The french doors. This is a requirement my wife has for the room, so I have done everything I can to incorporate it. Special thanks to John Hile at the Soundproofing Company for getting me set up with all the gear I need, and for finding a french door sound isolation system that will hopefully do the job! GG, clips, dispensing system, putty pads etc should be arriving at my house in a week or so.

Here are some shots of what it looks like now:






More information and details to follow. And I promise, lots of pics as we move along. I am taking the last 2 weeks in March off to work on the basement, and hope to get the framing done and get started on plumbing and electrical. I'm hoping to be generally done the basement by the end of the summer, likely with lots of finishing and equipping left to do on the theater room.
I plan on doing most of the work myself. Definitely not going to do the mudding and taping, or carpets, and might look at getting someone in to do the bar cabinetry.

Here's a growing list of other theaters that I am using as inspirations and guides for my own:
Making the "Bacon Race" theater (going to try to copy as much as possible from this beautiful theater)
An Aspen Woods Theater (just a couple blocks from mine!)
DIY Fabric Frames (Going to need to reference this a lot in the future)

If you made it this far, thanks for your interest in my project!
Steve
Edited by sgolko - 5/22/13 at 1:30pm

Thanks, I certainly hope it will be.
I did the mudding and taping in the last basement, and got zero enjoyment out of it. In the end I got a great product out of it, but I'm at the point in my life that if i don't get enjoyment out of it, I'm going to pay someone else to do it.

On a positive note, step 1 is done: Building, Electrical, and Plumbing permits were acquired this morning, without a hitch!

Good questions:
1) I think so. We still need to confirm, but I think we will be using something like 28" doors (total opening 56"), so the swing won't be as big as a normal door would be. The way it is drawn up, I've got about 30" of room. of course, we will make sure it works before we build the riser.
2) Yes. There are a couple reasons we don't like that. The ceiling is lower in that area, and then it creates what we thought of as unusable space in the theater room where the closet currently is (bedroom still has to have a window in it according to code). We drew out many different scenarios, and couldn't make anything work as well as this layout.
3+4) Conceptually, although I will figure out the exact locations later on. Door swing and optimal acoustics will play a factor in the decision.
5) Nope. I have given very little thought to equipment. Based on what I had in my other house, and based on small amounts of research, my thoughts for equipment are:
-Klipsch RF-62 line speakers
-Panasonic PT AE 8000 projector
-Pioneer SC-61 AVR
Of course, I will need to do a bunch more research when the time comes to buy everything, but I think I will end up with something in or around those lines.

Wow I must have been out of it yesterday.... No, my drawing is not representative of what I am planning for side speakers. I will be doing 7.1 or 7.2, straight up. no array on the surrounds. Not sure if i will put my back surrounds on the side wall or back wall though, need to look into what will be best.

After lots of help and suggestions form Tedd, my wife and I have settled on a new (slightly modified) plan:

We will plan the open room at the bottom of the page so that we have an option to throw another wall up if needed, to split the room into a craft room/storage room.
No more double doors, we will go with a single door.
AV rack has been moved to the back of the theater room.
If someone ends up living in the bedroom, we will just bring in an armoire to use as a closet..

Some things that I need to research more of now that this is the plan:
-How can I best reduce the noise coming from an AV rack? Will a glass enclosed AV rack work, like this one in the Bacon Race:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1350179/making-the-bacon-race-theater/630#post_21113814
or should I build a fabric covered door like Big's:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/788074/show-me-your-rack#post_9477226
Either way, I will need a rack that slides/rolls out, as I wont have access form the rear, in order to keep the sound sealed off.

-I assume I am going to have custom make a door frame, to fit the staggered stud wall and fabric panels on the inside... I'll be spending some time looking at what others have done on that. Generally speaking, do people modify a purchased sealed door frame, or make their own from scratch?

-Graphic Eye controls. I know they exist, and are cool. That's about it... lots of research needed on that before I get to wiring.

Lots to do! The weekend will be spent prepping the basement, meaning moving all the crap from down there in to the garage, and planning out what I can start on come Monday.

Alright, progress!
2 days in, and already seeing some thing happening.
I spent the weekend and Monday cleaning out the basement, which is mostly done now. Just a couple stragglers, which I am too lazy to find a home for.
Today, I started by pulling out the vapor barrier and insulation for about half the basement, piling it up as I went:



In order to decouple the exterior walls, I figured I would have to rip down 3 of the exterior walls, chop off an inch or 2, reassemble, and stand back up. But, upon inspection:


The builders didn't actually snug the walls up to the joists. They left it about 1" short, and secured it via blocking to the wood at the top of the concrete walls. So all I had to do was bust out the blocking! Not too hard.

After that was done, I tore down the landing at the bottom of the stairs. Before:

After:


In other good news, I received a shipment today:


So tomorrow, off to Hope Depot and time to start framing. I'm hoping to get about half of the walls up tomorrow, including the final wall of the theater room. By the end of the weekend, I should be able to be more or less done framing, and have the dricore down.

More updates to come, including lots of pics!

Not sure why I am still surprised, but it took longer than I expected to buy and unload the lumber. But, finally:

Thanks.
Absolutely, lots of the typical obligatory pics!
On today's menu: continue framing, and figure out what size of door opening I need to leave for the theater door. I think the first place I will look is the bacon race thread; Big is super detailed in his descriptions, and that is more or less the theater mine will be inspired by (ie I want to copy it!)
But first, off to Starbucks for some coffee, and the drug store for some decongestants (if course, the entire week I have been off I've been fighting a cold...)

Locked and loaded. a) the plumbing rough-in is there. I don't want to have to move it all across the basement. b) the ceiling is lower over there, so i'd rather not have the bathroom back there.
I think I am going to flip the bathroom 180 degrees though. In other words, switch the door and bar, and switch the shower with the sink. This works better with where the rough-ins are, and really doesn't make any difference otherwise.

Update on yesterday's progress:
Secured exterior walls with IB3 clips:



Put up some dust barriers going upstairs and for a cutting area:



And got my very first section of staggered stud wall up:


Going to try to bang out a bunch of walls right now.

Looks like the mountains are starting to get dumped on right now (15 cm so far, expecting another 20 or so by tomorrow) so progress will come to a screaming halt tomorrow as I take a ski day. For all you Americans, that's about 15 inches total.

So after some quick searching, I found that I need to leave basically the door size plus the size of jamb plus some wiggle room.
So if I am going to have a 32x80 door, with 3/4" plywood jambs, plus 1/4" on each siide, I should leave 34"x81" for the door. But... I will need a bottom jamb as well...lets call that 3/4" of something, with a 1/2" gap under the door (will order the bottom door sealer thing from soundproofing company).
So I should be framing in the door jamb as 34"x82 1/4". Correct? Anyone see any issues with this?

Next question: in framing a door into a staggered stud wall... I will still want 2 2x6's on either side if the door, with a solid top plate. correct?

Steve

Today's progress:

Oh man, lots to update. Over the weekend, more or less finished framing, and got all the dricore down in the non-theater areas of the basement.
Bar:


Bathroom:


AV Rack (looking from the bedroom):


Furnace room (left out some studs for A/C installation):


Bedroom:


Under the Stairs:


Also got started on the rough-in wiring for the non-theater portion of the basement.

But with all this wonderful progress, of course there is a snag I have run into. I chose to frame the theater wall in line with (and under) the main beam for the house. This is fine because it is a natural break in the basement, but it also has it's issues. One being that the door is going to be very tight for space under it. I may have to cut it down 1" short of the standard 80". Oh well, not a huge issue.
The bigger issue is maintaining sound isolation, along with this STUPID gas line, plumbing and HVAC running along it. Here are some pics:



One issue at a time:
-Gas line - I've got a plumbing friend coming to help move the hot water tank, so i'll get that gas line moved over at the same time.
-HVAC - there are 2 smaller diameter lines coming off the main line going up right above the main beam, and that's it. I'm fairly certain that i can move the main line over to the other side of the beam and bring the lines up from the other side. I'm going to attempt this tomorrow. I haven't had a good sheet metal cut in a long time, I'm looking forward to it...
-Plumbing - Don't think this guy can be moved. But that's alright. I will box it off, it will be half hidden behind the screen wall anyways.
-Sound isolation - the edge of the wall is directly in line with the edge of the beam. so i have to do something to isolate things here. I could basically just box it off 2 inches away from the beam or something like that... not really sure. Going to have to think more about it. In any case, I will have a soffit built inside my shell, to house some rope lighting and HVAC inside the room. Lots to think about here...

On the docket for tomorrow:
-Move the HVAC line to outside the theater.
-Move a heat exchanger to make room for the hot water tank
-Rearrange my electrical panel area to make room for an electrical sub-panel.
-Perhaps continue with some electrical rough-in.

Also going to need to read through the graphic eye master page to figure out how I need to be wiring the theater room.

A question for everyone: In my AV Rack room, I am going to be running 2 plug ins (each on their own circuit), a pile of Cat5's, a pile of coax, and a pile of speaker wires. Am I best off to mount some sort of box inside the room to house all my low voltage connections with a single point of entry for all the cables, or just put a bunch of gang boxes to house 2 or 4 connections each? It seems like a bad idea to punch that many holes in the drywall, even if they are all backed with putty pads...

Steve

I think what I am going to do is put in my 2 plugs ins, then mount a communications box. I'll figure out how I bring in all the cables later. I think that'll give a nice clean look back there anyways.

Well, yesterday was an interesting day... One of those days where things just don't go as planned.
I spent pretty much the entire day moving that main hvac line. It took many swears and a bit of blood shed, but it eventually got finished.
Followed that up with some home made tacos, then off to Direct Buy to try to plan out what all is going to go into the basement. And the list looks like this:
-klipsch reference rf and RC 52 or 62 speakers (need to check whether 52's will fill the room size adequately), with 2 klipsch subs.
-Panasonic 7000 or 8000 pj. Need to see if I need the extra lumens.
- koja couches. Front row will be |_|_|_| back rom will be |__|__|. Have to find some to sit in, but we were looking at the Barchetta.
-bar cabinets will be made. Will have Marevel 24" beverage center and 17" wine chiller built into the bottom, along with an under-sink cabinet, and another set of drawer and cabinet to finish off the space. Up top will be a combination of glass-door cabinets and shelving, to house wine, scotch, and glasses for each. Quartz countertop
-bathroom will have a vanity made that matches the styling of the bar. Shower will be corner style. 60"x35" likely. Maybe 32". I think we are going to go with an acrylic base, and tiled walls. My wife is weary about a tile base leaking down there with us doing it ourselves.

Still gotta order all this, but it's good knowing what's available and generally what we want. Not going to order any of the electronics until I'm basically done the theater room. Next year probably.

Now off to finish what I wanted to get done yesterday...

To all you Canadians out there: where did you order your graphic eyes from? It doesn't look like they are very available up here...

I haven't perhaps I will look there.
As it turns out, the Lutron site didn't recognize my postal code for whatever reason, there ARE a couple dealers here in Calgary. I'll have to check them out. If not, online it is.

1 main reason for Klipsch... Direct Buy carries them. I know they are a good brand, and at the price I can get them for, I doubt I can find better dollar for dollar.
Internet direct sites are great for the lower 48'ers. As soon as you try to bring something like that across the border to Canada, you end up paying a ton for shipping, duties, and brokerage. Eats up all your savings. Not that I am complaining, but even for the stuff I got from the Soundproofing Company, I had to pay a pretty penny to get it all to my house. It's the price I pay for living in the land of maple syrup and real beer.