Basement Theater/Media room on the CHEAP!

I think I'm at the point where I can start a thread of my on the cheap man cave. We bought our 1950’s ranch house in November 2013. The interior needed a ton of work. We knocked down three walls in the living room/dining room to open up the kitchen. With that “mostly done” I’ve been given permission to start my “Great escape” theater/media room. A major problem with the room is it’s ceiling height, it’s only 83” high….just under 7’ with a metal beam running right through the middle of the room at 6’ high. The room itself is not really the emphasis, more of the equipment really. I’m not going to be doing a lot of sound deadening….I’m not going to be de-coupling the studs from the walls or anything like that…but it’s going to be fast and cheap…the money is going into the gear.


With this build all 7 speaker are going to be powered. This comes with challenges when wiring…all speaker locations will have a power outlet, a xlr cable and I’ll also run 12/4 speaker cable just incase I switch back to “regular” speakers. Speaker are Emotiva Stealth 8’s for R&L…Stealth 6’s rear for the time being a pair of Adam A3 for sides. I’m waiting for Emotiva to come out with their Stealth 88 for a center.

This will be a semi dedicated theater/game/music room. I have a home built HTPC with a few Terabytes of HD for movies and music. My wife is a big gamer and I’m a big two channel music fan.

Here is a link (hope it works) to what the basement with theater looks like

http://planner.roomsketcher.com/?ctxt=rs_com&language=en#/?pid=1153306


I’ve been working a few hours on weekends and during the week when I get a minute. I’ve got all but one xlr run of the low voltage wire, and I’ve got about 85% of my electrical run. My good friend (an electrician) is coming over tomorrow to help me tie a few things up and give me more direction. I’m at the drywall point right now…but I’m going to have to either enlist my wife or a friend to help.


Projector is an Epson 5030 on a Elite 109" screen, I just set up the projector for the first time a couple days ago and was totally blown away...I can't wait for the room to get finished.

This picture is standing in the back of the room looking toward the front screen wall (wall not built)




Same shot with wall built



You can see the metal beam and the screen temporarily mounted...the LCD tv will be mounted to the "screen wall" and I'll drop the screen in front of it when using the projector. I just received my DVDO Quick6 HDMI switcher that has dual HDMI outputs that mirror each other. I did a dry run of everything today and I'll do another tomorrow just to make sure everything is working before the drywall goes up.


Here is a pic with screen down, Stealth 8 in a corner...



Watched a little Sochi last night..



Another Pic



This was from about where the Right speaker will be looking toward the back, the green chair is about in the middle with the metal beam above it.