Small Budget, Smaller Room HT Conversion - Page 2

Minor update.

I received some movie posters as gifts this past Christmas, and while they have been hanging since Dec. 28th, these are the first pictures I have taken of them.







Please excuse the Flash. I'll try to get some cleaner pictured in natural light later this week.

I've also added some brushed bronze cover plates to the outlets which you can see in Picture #3.

Carpet tiles, secured with strips of double sided carpet tape on the edges (I tested the tape strips and they can be removed with a little effort without marking the hardwood)


Velvet actually.


Coaster Studios that were being cleared out by Bel at their distribution center last year just before they switched to selling their own "in-house" brand of theater seating..

Managed to get a little more done over the past weekend.

Finally took out the "temporary" surround speakers and mounted the ones which were bought for the room months ago...





And took a little bit of time to sit down and appreciate them with a TrueHD soundtrack...

Our goal was to create a theater which could potentially be turned back into a bedroom simply by removing the equipment and repainting. So in-wall speakers didn't work for us either. However, we didn't want the speakers to be a distraction from the screenwall.

Since the Mirage speakers I'm using are omni-directional, I wanted something which would hide their placement in the room but would be transparent to the transmission of sound in all directions. That was why I designed the pillars this way.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures while I was building them however, they are basically just made of a framework of 1x3's with quarter-inch paneling stained and cut to fit the top sections and with speaker cloth stapled to the sides on the bottom half.

The basic construction of the frames is fairly similar to that of the center cabinet, just longer and narrower. Here is a picture of the center cabinet while it was being built to give an idea what I am talking about.



There are removable grills made for the bottom (where the speakers) are that are a simple wooden frame with a cloth cover which are attached with velcro tabs.



The pillars are then secured to the center cabinet with clamps allowing for easy removal if needed.

Not the most elegant bit of carpentry to be sure, but since they were basically built by a guy who has never used power tools or made anything out of wood before this project, I'm happy with them.



I made all of the pieces much larger than was required for the very small Mirage Omnisat speakers so that I would have room to potentially install larger, full sized speakers at some future date. Not that I don't love the Omnisats but I figured that if I was going to build custom speaker enclosures that I might as well plan ahead.

There is a tread following the construction of the screen in the DIY Screen forums here:

Screen construction

But basically it was just a simple frame made from 1x3's covered with a sheet of Black-out cloth which was cut to overlap the edges of the screen by about 2" on each side.

Right now they are going under the edge of the carpet around the room however the attic does give me access to the wall drops so I can "upgrade" to in-wall connections later if I think it's needed.

Originally (due to doubts from my wife) the whole idea was to be able to convert the room back to a bedroom by simply removing the equipment and re-painting, so we didn't want to make any cut outs or alterations to the walls.

However, now that we have the HT setup (and my wife now loving the room), the likelihood of our changing it back to a bedroom has basically dropped to zero so I am now considering making some changes to the space which would give it a bit more "finished" look.

Actually, the front of that piece doesn't open, I left the back of the unit open to allow access instead.

Technically, I could have built an open frame and a removable front cover for it in the same manner as the side units, however, the center piece was my first attempt at carpentry and I didn't think of the removable grill concept until after I started working on the side pieces.

If I had to do it over again, I would simply build the rectangular frame and make the front grill a separate piece, but I doubt that I will be "remodeling" that cabinet any time soon.

Basically, two pieces of 1/4" plywood, cut to fit the window sill, with Owen's Corning 705 sandwiched between them.

The window side has 3" of upholstery foam glued to it covered in BO cloth, the side facing into the room has two simple handles attached to it to make the whole thing easy to insert/remove from the window.

There is 1/2" foam weatherstripping along the inside of the sill to help seal out sound.

Finally, the whole thing is covered by the velvet drapes.

Prevents all light and most sound from coming in through the window without having to permanently seal the whole thing up.

I'm resurrecting this thread because the urge has hit me to finally get started on finishing the last details of this room.

I saw an adjustable ceiling mounted light fixture at Lowes and decided to add it in to replace the original "bedroom" style light that has been in there.





I think the modern design and cherry stained wooden elements go well with the rest of the room and since the lights themselves are adjustable, I am able to angle all three towards the back of the room to help reduce light spill onto the screen.

I also swapped out the regular toggle switch for the light with one that has a sliding dimmer switch built into it.

The combination of the new light plus dimmer allows me to actually have a bit of ambient light on in the room without taking too much from the image on the screen.

Hopefully I can get started on building the acoustical panels sometime over the next two weeks and add those as well.