Ronnie's Home Theater Construction Begins

Hello everyone. I actually started working on my HT in November of 2005 and thought it was about time to start a thread. I have been an avid reader of this forum for many years. The knowledge base of the members is amazing.

I have always wanted my own home theater. In July of 2003 we finished construction of our new home. It included a dedicated 16x20 theater room. I wanted to begin immediately on the theater room, but the wife had other plans. Im sure you guys know where im coming from. We moved from an 1800 sqft home into a 4000 sqft home and she insisted we furnish and decorate all the other rooms first. Well, after 3 years of theater room dormancy, I have the full approval to start the build

Please be patient with me. I am a normal mortal with shallow pockets and limited time. I wish I was superhuman like a few others around here. Those guys are building some amazing theaters in warp speed. Congrats guys. Hopefully this thread can be both interactive and informative. Im looking for some great feedback and help from you guys.

The wife and I fell in love with the style of theater that Chris Armbruster built. I am attempting to capture a little bit of his design in my proscenium. Thanks Chris.

Some of the Details.

Room Dimensions: 16x20x9
Screen Size: 106"-110" 16.9 profile
Seating Distance: Front Row - 10.5 or 11'
Seating Distance: Back Row - 16.5 or 17'
Equipment: Still undecided.
Walls: GOM on frames with 1" acoustic treatments.
Other: Lots of Oak



Here is a pic of the room before any work.



Room Layout (without side and rear columns)



Preliminary Sketchup of Stage and Soffit without side speaker columns. Colors are for display purposes only and do not match the color scheme I will go with.


So far I have built the stage, screenwall, and soffit.



My next task is to begin building the speaker columns for the stage. I have a few ideas sketched out, but nothing definate. I am debating on making them curved to match the stage and soffit, or just keep them straight, but on an angle. I'm also trying to decide if I should leave room (about 2 feet) for curtains between the speaker columns and screen (similar to Chris's), or just bring the speaker columns out about 3 feet almost to edge of screen wall and not do curtains or swag. May have to post my ideas and get some input.

If you are interested in a little more detail behind the work done so far, you can visit my website at the link below.

I realize this is not a lot of info to go on so far and I am sure there will be many more questions, but i'm open to constructive criticism. Please let me know if you guys have any concerns on my progress so far or future plans.

The data rack is the home to my whole house av/data/telco wiring. It also houses some servers and data equipment. This thread goes into a little more detail about the data rack. Wiring closet

My equipment rack for the theater room will also be contained in that room. You can see the location of it in the diagram. Bottom left corner of equipment room. It will extend about 2 feet into the wiring closet.

Ronnie

Thanks for all the kind words guys.....

Swithey.... I have not decided on any of the equipment yet. I have a few ideas, but i figured at the pace im going, I might as well not get to deep into it now. Things will be better and cheaper when I get to that point.

MountainAsh... I will put up as many pics as I can. I actually have a lot more on my website. I thought about posting them here also, but didnt know if everyone woud be interested. I would sorta have to back track at this point. I can do it if everyone is in favor of it.

SandmanX....Thanks, its kinda hard to show you guys what I envision as the final product. The front soffit is kinda plain right now. I will be putting up a lot of trim and detail work on it later. And your theater thread has to be the coolest thing on the planet. I have followed it since day one. Out of the 80,298 views, 1,748 of them are mine. I hope you dont mind if I still a few ideas. I love the panel design scheme.

YldeSyde.. . Sounds good. I think there are enough of us here to have a pretty good turnout. It would be nice to see a few of these in real life. Pics just dont represent the real work that goes into our hobby.

Ronnie

I need some help from you guys. I,m trying to decide on the look for my stage speaker columns. I cant decide if I should go with curved framing to match the soffit and steps and extend the width for a fuller look, or just do the standard straight look and tie in some curtains to bring it all together. What do you guys think looks best. Or maybe you have some suggestions that differ from either of these. Can you take a look at the 2 designs and give me some feedback? Dont pay attention to the colors, I am just trying to get an idea of the overall design.

1st is what I will call the curved full look.




Here is another shot of the curved columns from a side angle.




And another view directly from the side.




Now here is the other version. I will call this the standard look with curtains.




An angled side view




A direct side view of the standard with curtains.




This is driving me crazy.

Ronnie

Wow, all curved so far from this board. Its been 100% curtains from my friends and family. My daughter says the wide curved look is to masculine. She says it looks like something a bunch of guys would gather around and watch football Friends and family say the curtains look more elegant and capture more of the feeling im going for. Please dont be concerned with the colors. The drawings were just quick mockups and I suck at that stuff. Wish I could render like Reaper and some of the others

BPape, thanks for the concern. This is the front stage area, so only left, right, and sub will go behind the area in question. Either will have plenty of space. Its about 2.5-3 feet to the back wall, 3 feet from side wall to screen and around 1.5 feet between speaker columns and screen. I may also make the front cover removable. As you mentioned, once I get to the side and rear room columns, sizing will probably be more of a concern.

Thanks for the input guys. Any other thoughts?

Ronnie

I added the swags to the drawings.

Jayken, I was thinking the same thing about the screen size and future modifications if needed. Curtains would definately make that easier. I made the screen wall 10' wide for that same reason.

How about a combination? Curved speaker walls and curtains? I might also move them out towards the front about 4-6 inches.

Thanks, although im sure my skillset doesnt do the program justice. Im using crayola's compared to some of the other stuff I see on this forum. I have figured it out just enough to give me a basic idea of how things might look. Its called Sketchup. They have a 30 day eval on their website. Check it out, its pretty cool.

If anyone has any idea of how to import real colors and textures into it, please let me know. It came with a few basic materials to use.

Ronnie

Jaken, I see what you mean. I take it you mean speaker columns instead of screen wall. The screen wall is the same size in all the sketches.

It does sort of de-emphasize the screen with the wider columns.

Let me play with it some more. I will make them the same width, but curved. Also bring them out towards the front a little.

Be back shortly.

Ok, lets try these. I made the columns a little narrower and moved them forward 3 inches. I also rotated them about 10 degrees to match the steps a little better. What do you guys think about this? That leaves tons of room behind them for bass traps and speakers.

Variation 4



Variation 4 side view


Ronnie

Sorry Jaken. Dont mean to hold up progress

Let me throw you a cookie to tide you over until this weekend when I will have some time to do the real work. I did a quick mockup of one side to get a feel for how it looked in the room. Im thinking I should go about 6 inches wider on the columns. It extends 28 inches from the side wall in this pic. Maybe 34-36 might look better? Its also hard to get the feel of the curve in the pic without some trim or something to set it off.

Dont laugh at the mockup material (trash bag and an old blanket). You gotta do what you gotta do.





Ronnie