Mini theater ideas and help

2 rows in a 12.5 foot room is going to be very tight. How far from the screen will the first row be, and how big will the screen be?

May want to consider just one row. That second row, especially if you have recliners will be VERY close to the screen, especially one so large. I have my front row at about 11 feet and even that's a tad bit close for my liking.

Agreed. That's the first thing I thought of. Quick question, have you considered pulling the closet out? Doing so would allow you to use a sectional on the back wall. It's not ideal, but you'd salvage some of the seating space, give yourself more distance and increase your usable space in the room. I don't necessarily mean an around-the-wall sectional either, something with a slight curve to it a foot or two out from the back wall could be very nice, especially if the closet were gone.

I agree with the posters above on the seating and removing the closet.
It's a small room already, don't make it cramped. Do you have more room in the basement that you could expand the HT room ?

My room is 11 x 16 and I will be able to only place one row of theater recliners in there. The image shows my room with a scale set of seats fully reclined. As you can see it's pretty tight in there.

That looks like your best bet for the space available unless you can really knock down walls to adjacent rooms. For the rack you may want to do a small built in unit under the screen. Im in the process of making one myself and framed a couple pilars around it to give it that theater feel..Here's some not-so-updated pictures of what I did to fit in the electronics...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=767861

Its not too big of an endeavor and its completely removable (i built it straight on top of the existing carpet) should a future buyer not want it.

It is indeed tough because it's such a narrow room. I have a larger room in a similar orientation; I have my room flipped opposit yours (door by the seats instead of by the screen) simply because acoustically it's easier to manage. With your space considerations though it looks like what you've come up with is the best compromise.

You could indeed put the AV equipment in a shelf below the screen. You could either do one shelf in the middle or two on either side of a center area for your center channel (unless you're planning to mount this above your screen). Either way the strongest caution I have is if you put doors on the shelving unit for the equipment, either have the doors opaque and use an IR blaster or make sure your glass is as dark as you can get it. Trust me, it might seem cool at first but eventually you will grow to hate those bright little lights on your gear right below the screen.

Of course, since this is a brainstorming section you could get ridiculous, take out that window, build a box on the outside of the house and build an equipment rack into it.

Another possibility is building your equipment shelf outside of the bathroom. Maybe that's what the red-ish writing is on the basement plans you attached, I couldn't quite tell.

Questions:

Any idea how high the window is? Is it a casement window? How deep is the basement? Curious more for light control than anything else. My theater is in a basement room and I have two small casement windows right up against the ceiling. One I covered up when I installed the screen on that wall, the other was, like yours, on the wall opposite the door. My house was built in '67 and has no AC and a boiler for heat. I love radiant heat, and discovered that I was able to avoid a lot of HVAC install issues others deal with by putting a window AC unit in the casement. It tilts back slightly, and because it's down in a casement is actually a lot easier to insulate in the winter (from inside and outside of the house) without pulling the AC unit out. I don't care how cool your basement is (temperature-wise), your theater will get hot (it's crazy, I didn't believe it until it was happening frequently in mine) and its a huge boon to have that dedicated little AC in there.

Ceilings? Any idea? You're in a basement...is the ceiling suspended panelling, or is it finished drywall? If it's panelling you're definitely in business. Mine is. I ran my cables up one side of the screen behind the curtains and strung over the drop-tiles and out of the room to my equipment rack in the next room. No big installation problems there. I prefer my drop-ceiling for ease of tinkering with acoustic treatment. I prefer to leave my floor a hard surface and use absorbing panels on the ceiling. The room isn't as dead and this works better for me because I can use the room as an extra recording space (acoustic instruments sound great in there).

If it's finished you still have options. Get a stud finder and figure out which direction the floor joists run, then place your equipment in the most convenient area to which you can do cable runs to the projector, speakers, etc. This will be trickier but can be done.

I guess this really is all speculation until you can get in and really get a sense of the room. Find out what you can about the ceiling, the wall behind the screen, the window, etc.