[Gouie]

EQUIPMENT LIST

I’ve been asked by a few to include my equipment list. Here you go:

Projector: JVC RS420
Screen: Seymour XD transparent 2.40:1 150”
Primary Amp: Sherbourn PA 7/200
Atmos Amp: Emotiva BasX A-500
Front Subs Amp: iNuke 6000
Rear Subs Amp: iNuke 6000
Pre-Processor: Marantz 7703
DVD: Panasonic UHF DPUB820k
Media Player: Apple TV 4K
Server: Unraid
Seating: Valencia Verona
LCR Speakers: DIY Soundgroup 1099
Rear & Surround speakers: DIY Soundgroup Volt 10
Atmos: DIY Soundgroup Volt 10
Front Subs: Mach5 FTW-21
Rear Subs: Dayton Audio UM18-22
Remote: iPad & Harmony Elite

Like many others here I have been scouring this great forum for years. I have admired so many incredible builds, dreaming that maybe just maybe that would be me one day. I am so fortunate to now be in a position to start the journey. Well, to be honest, the journey started 3 years ago - this is my story.
First, I feel the need to explain my screen name. I studied Computer Engineering in college many moons ago. I don’t recall the situation but do remember being introduced by a friend of mine as Gouie – my last name is Gould combined with a play on the acronym GUI – Graphical User Interface. 20 years later the name has stuck.

Next, the build name; El Unico, translation ‘The Only One’. 6 years ago my wife and I made the call to move from the city, and found a great little gem of a property. One of the main considerations for me was a basement that could accommodate a theatre build. This place is perfect. Half of the basement is finished giving my son a place the loiter, leaving the other half completely open for development. It's a small community and our house number happens to be 1. I have had a number of firsts in my life since beginning this journey and my wife and I have completely fallen for the Mexican culture. Combine it all and El Unico seemed fitting.

So, the canvas

As you can see I was faced with a number of challenges. The duct work was an absolute nightmare. Because of the way the joists run there were a number of cold air returns to deal with and the bizarre dip that the main heat truck took because the gas line was obviously installed first. There was also a cove that jut into the space. It was used in the adjacent room to house a TV. So, the first think I tackled was said cove.

That was about it for day one. I spent time at the end of day as most of us do I would imagine, standing in the room starring. It was then that I finally figured out an annoying issue that we'd been dealing with since moving in. The house is a bungalow with the master on once side and the kitchen on the other. When running water in the kitchen there is a significant drop in volume in the master, most noticeable when showering. A main water trunk was used with branches coming off and running to each location. What they had done however, was run 3/4" from the supply then convert down to 1/2" about 20 feet later then back up to 3/4" 20 feet after that. The next day I stopped by the local supply and spent the next 4 months replacing most of the water lines in the house. This was the result, individual home runs to each location.

I also moved the valves for the sprinklers outside. Yes, you heard me, the actual valves were installed in the house with individual lines for each zone running out through the exterior wall. At the same time I ran a copper line from the mechanical room to the garage. This has turned out great. It allows me to connect the compressor in the garage and either blow out the sprinklers from the mechanical room or run air tools in the basement.

With that complete I was ready to get back to removing the TV cove. I hooked up my work lights and immediately blew the breaker. Great. Further investigation revealed that much of the basement wiring was on a single breaker. I spent the next 3 months re-wiring. What was once a single breaker ended up being 7. Scary. I ended up with two sub panels, one for the basement and one in the garage.

Two deck builds, a shed build and a remodel of the finished portion of the basement later and I was ready to get at it. The original plan had the theater extending to the wall that the rack is against in the picture above. The only access to the mechanical room would be a door that I would install in the walk-in closet in the bedroom at the other end of the basement. I thought this was perfectly fine because it would give me an additional 4 feet of theatre. My wife however did not. A door was installed where the cove once was and the room shrunk by 4 feet.

There's some creative framing around the heat trunk. I considered moving the gas line but quotes were coming in over $1000 and being that it will be behind the screen I made do. What would a build thread be without a green tape screen mock up?
Then I had to deal with the mess of cold air returns. The biggest problem was the one that ran down the center of the room and feeds the main living space directly above. I pulled down the tin and boxed it in using OSB, GG, sealant and lineacoustic and used the joist cavity to the edge of the room. It then drops down and runs 5 feet to get under the joists and exists the room. That is where it sits in it's current state; it has not yet been tied into the main trunk. If I were to do it again I would use 12" insulated flex. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it at the time but too late, I'm not re-doing it.

This is the complete mess joining the cavity to the tin. The problem as you can see is the need to transition through the water lines. The best way I could think to get a tight seal was spray foam. It may look ridiculous but it worked!

On to miles and miles of cable runs. I don't recall how long this took but it seemed like an eternity. I have wired all columns with 12AWG, coax and electrical for outlets and potential sconces. The back of the room also has 4 additional 12AWG and 2 coax for future subs. The front of the room has 12AWG for LCR and heights as well as 4 12AWG for subs and power for outlets. ATMOS has been wired and wire for outlets in the soffit tray as well as pots with 3 zones; the mains down the sides, the back of the room and the screen wash lights. I have also wired for lights behind the screen and conduit runs basically everywhere.
Here is a shot of the ceiling to give you an idea of the mess of wires ... and to appreciate how difficult installing DD into the joist cavities would end up being.

I'll continue the recap in another post, don't want to lose everything when my battery dies.

 

[Gouie]

I had considered removed the window all together but decided to simply fill it in. A thanks to Big for the suggestion. I installed a cheap blind, then 3/4"OSB. The edges were caulked than insulation and vapour barrier. I left the window unlocked in case I ever need to get in there.

The soffit work was challenge for me. It seems so darned simple but having never built them before, it took a lot of grey matter to get there. In the end they are WAAAYYYY over-engineered but oh well, they shouldn't come crashing down.

Because I used stock 2x4 getting them straight and plumb was a true test of patience. Every screw required that the frame be clamped to the first to ensure it lined up.

A big challenge was getting into the joist cavities to install and tuck tape vapour barrier. There was plastic there but it was so littered with holes it was useless and tape had not been used.

With the wiring complete I scheduled an inspection to have things looked at before insulating and closing up the walls. Things had been going so smoothly I thought the string of bad luck was behind me. Not the case. Scheduling to have someone come out they looked at the history of the house. Apparently there has not been a permit pulled since the house was built in 2001. That means that all of the construction in the basement was on the QT. It took 3 weeks but they finally agreed to do a post construction inspection done, tying it into the theatre build permit. Escaped one there. Onward march right? Nope, enter my water problems.


The house is a walkout with stucco finish. We started to notice a water line on the stucco rising from the ground. In a matter of weeks the water line was 4 feet up the wall. So the theatre took another pause and I spent the next 4 months dealing with this issue. I fully excavated down to the weeping tile and struck an underground river. The house has a sump pump but it is in the front of the house. It wasn't adequately dealing with the natural slope resulting in water build up at the rear of the house. The solution was to either excavate around the entire house and re-grade the weep in hopes that fixed the problem or install a second sump pump at the rear of the house that was essentially guaranteed to resolve the issue. We went for the sump pump.

It helped that my son is an operator

The area is now graded away from the house and runs into a French drain that then runs to the back of the property.

Mid pump install

And unfortunately the bedroom was the most logical place to put it to accommodate the discharge. Looks like a bomb went off; I kept my wife out of the basement until the work was completed!

With the latest bit of drama behind me I forged ahead and am VERY happy to say that the room is now fully insulated and drywall has arrived.

These guys worked hard. I had asked if they could deliver first thing in the morning and they were happy to accommodate. Had they known it was going to be -35 C, -45 C with the wind chill they may have pushed back. Boy I felt bad for these guys but they had smiles on their faces the entire time.

I am rejuvenated. My spirits are high and I am really looking forward to continuing this journey. I can't thank this community enough for the assistance thus far. There is no possible way I could have ever considered a project of this scale without the knowledge of the folks here. I hope that you can remain patient with me and I will do best to keep this thread current. Thanks for reading!

 

[Gouie]

I had a pretty productive day today. Before I get into that I realize I didn't share much about the design of the room. I'm still trying to dig up the plan that I drafted but do have a couple of sketchup shots I can show. Without a doubt the largest influence on the design is the Cinemar build. I have been fascinated with the incredible design and amazing attention to detail that when I sat down to design mine, whether I knowingly implemented a number of the same approaches or not, they are there as you can see.

The room is turning out to be a lot smaller than I had anticipated. It is 20 long by 16 wide. There will be 18" behind the screen leaving roughly 18' from screen to back wall. I am planning for a 150" 2.35 screen with a seating distance of 15'. The room is wired for 11.8.4 but I will be starting with a modest 7.2 setup. ATMOS will follow shortly after I'm sure, just having to make a few compromises due to some budget overruns in the build process.


Today was HVAC day. The room is fairly tight at this point. Although the door is still a simple hollow core and the drywall is not up yet, the air is very stale making work difficult. Because of the location of my main heat trunk running the entire length of one side of the room and the cold air return taking up 1/3 of the other side of the room, circulation will be a challenge. The plan has been to install a single 6" heat source through the soffit in front of the screen should heat be needed. Because the room is in the basement I'm sure I will be able to normalize the temperature through circulating fans. There is space on the opposite side of the screen wall for a single, large dead vent housing both a supply and return fan.

Because of the congested soffits I didn't think there would be a way to run the return to the back of the room leaving only the supply at the front as is widely suggested. Also, with the heat supply in the front soffit there would not be room, nor would it make sense to put the circulating feed and return in the front soffit as well. So, the plan has been to keep the heat source in the front soffit and run the circulation supply and return in opposite sides of the stage. Far from ideal I know but I felt that was the only option. During one of my regular 2:00 am awakenings I had an idea. There is room under the cold air return to fit 2 4" ducts. Bingo. The plan now is to run the 2 4" ducts down the soffit with the cold air return to the rear of the room as the circulating return and run a 6" duct to the front soffit for the circulating supply. So the front soffit will have the heat supply on one side and the circulating supply on the other. The rear soffit will have the circulating return on one side and most likely a vent pulling air from the projector shelf that will be build into the soffit, on the other side.


Off to the races, but wait a minute. The side soffits are not part of the sound proof envelope due to the duct work. If I am punching 2 4" holes in the soffit to run the circulating return lines I am creating an opening for sound to escape. The best approach would be to build a dead vent in the soffit to run the duct work but there is no way I was going to rip down the soffit. Far to much sweat and tears when into ensuring the soffit was true. Okay then, I had to bite the bullet and attempt to build a DD/GG dead vent inside an existing 15" tall by 18" wide soffit. If anyone is wondering how long that takes, the answer is 6 hours. Man was this difficult. My arms look like I've been rolling in cactuses and every joint in my body aches but it's done. I had originally planned to run the dead vent the full length of the soffit but there would be no way to jimmy the material through the small openings. Warning: it's not pretty but it will work.

With that behind me it was on to the dead vent. Before I could close the area in I had to tie in the cold air return that feeds the main room above the theatre. For this a ran an 8" insulated duct from the tin run in the side soffit to the main return trunk.


Duct coming from the tin run out of the theatre.

I installed an 8" extension into the side of the main return truck to connect the flex duct to.

Then simply connected the duct

Sure is nice to know that return is connected once again, it's been two years since I torn the original duct work down. Next it was onto the framing of the dead vent. This went very well and I was complete to the this point within a couple of hours. I followed Ted's guideline as best I could. Everything went to plan except one small error; I failed to account for the DD on one of the sides. Not a big deal, I simply installed the DD inside the frame vs. outside. It shouldn't be a problem as none of the vents framing is in contact with the house framing.

That's it for today. Tomorrow I hope to run the circulation supply and return into the dead vent and close off the top. Till then.

 

[Gouie]

Needing a bit of a break from build and as a reminder of why I'm doing this, I ordered some equipment last week. I've never owned separates before and really wanted to give them a go with a dedicated room. Not wanting to over spend on the main amp I went looking for used. I found a great deal on a Sherbourne. They were a pet project of Emotiva's, tailoring to the custom install market. After a few years they rolled the product line into Emo. It's a 7 channel amp, 200w per. The thing has two power outlets and weights 115 lbs! I also ordered the Marantz 7703 pre/pro. Now I can stare at the unopened boxes as motivation.

 

[gonzodan]

Needing a bit of a break from build and as a reminder of why I'm doing this, I ordered some equipment last week. I've never owned separates before and really wanted to give them a go with a dedicated room. Not wanting to over spend on the main amp I went looking for used. I found a great deal on a Sherbourne. They were a pet project of Emotiva's, tailoring to the custom install market. After a few years they rolled the product line into Emo. It's a 7 channel amp, 200w per. The thing has two power outlets and weights 115 lbs! I also ordered the Marantz 7703 pre/pro. Now I can stare at the unopened boxes as motivation.

Looks great, It gets frustrating when feels you are taking 1 step forward only to find something that sets you back. Keep it up it looks great so far.

 

[Gouie]

I've hit a slight bump and am looking for options. I'm working on finishing up the dead vent, doing my best to follow the approach that Ted suggests. The vent sits 1" away from the neighbouring theatre wall. The duct from the dead vent is to connect to a 6" chunk of PVC that passes through the theatre wall. I'm thinking that the density of the PVC is good enough to cover the 1" gap without much unwanted noise leaving or entering. I'm calling around the city and am getting insane quotes of $12/ft with a minimum of 12 feet. Not going to happen. I'm looking for substitutes. It's only an inch gap but I'd rather not use the flex duct if it would diminish the work that's going into building the dead vent.


Thanks!

 

[dsv4]

I've hit a slight bump and am looking for options. I'm working on finishing up the dead vent, doing my best to follow the approach that Ted suggests. The vent sits 1" away from the neighbouring theatre wall. The duct from the dead vent is to connect to a 6" chunk of PVC that passes through the theatre wall. I'm thinking that the density of the PVC is good enough to cover the 1" gap without much unwanted noise leaving or entering. I'm calling around the city and am getting insane quotes of $12/ft with a minimum of 12 feet. Not going to happen. I'm looking for substitutes. It's only an inch gap but I'd rather not use the flex duct if it would diminish the work that's going into building the dead vent.


Thanks!

Take a look at this and see if it is what you want.
6 inch schedule 40, 1 Foot @$17.00

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-inch-diam...188960?hash=item1c6fa54f20:g:lX0AAOxyVaBS3i0H

 

[Gouie]

Pro, that's it, con as is usually the case, doesn't ship to Canada.


I've tracked down some 25 gauge galvanized pipe locally that they sell in 3' chunks for $25. Just not sure what specific properties of the PVC are important ... if any.

 

[dsv4]

Pro, that's it, con as is usually the case, doesn't ship to Canada.


I've tracked down some 25 gauge galvanized pipe locally that they sell in 3' chunks for $25. Just not sure what specific properties of the PVC are important ... if any.

Well darn, I thought they would and only would charge some export fee there.

 

[Gouie]

I am no longer surprised by what it takes to get product into Canada. I had a $4.00 part for my roto-zip shipped because I couldn't find in in Canada anywhere. Shipping was $9.00 and UPS duty/border handling fees were $12.00. $25.00 for a $4.00 part!

 

[dsv4]

Ok Try this one. Ebay Canada says us and Canadian dollar. enter your zip code for price over all.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/6-Inch-Diame...1eb336270f:m:mfh1ZmQgieLnmb3mroecmmA#shpCntId

 

[Gouie]

Not a lot of time to work on the room tonight, hot tub date night with the wife. I did manage to extend the circulation return lines out of the room and prep the dead vent to attach them. I'll build a box register for inside the dead vent where the lines come it to allow me to transition from 2 - 4" ducts to a single 6" that the fan requires.

The top of the vent has been enclosed and I used a couple of duct starters to connect them.

One thing that I knew would be a challenge was the 6" circulation feed. The duct will be in the front soffit but to have it enter directly into the dead vent would mean a very large vent, roughly 4' x 4'. I do not want to lose that much space in the neighbouring room so duct will end up exiting just in front of the dead vent as it is now.

I think I'll end up building a DD/GG soffit of sorts that will run 12" out from the top of the framing up to the ceiling and run the width of the dead vent. I'll make it deep enough to sit 6" into the top of the dead vent so that it can exit the soffit directly downward. Makes sense in my head, we'll have to see how it goes.


That's all for today, wine and a hot tub are calling.

 

[Gouie]

Work's a little crazy right now with lots on the go and trying to get things off my desk before a beach vacation in February. This means only about an hour or two a night on the room so progress is a little slow.


I'm starting to think about my ATMOS setup with the ceiling going up shortly. My original plan was to place the speakers in the soffit cantilever so I haven't been too fussed about exact location. I'm starting to re-think that approach. The bottom of the soffit is 88" from the floor or roughly 4' from the top of the head. If I place them in the ceiling I'll gain another 15 or so inches of separation. This presents a couple of challenges that I could use some help working through.


1.) I am concerned about a speaker in the ceiling with the kitchen directly above the theatre. I'm thinking that a boxed speaker would be preferred for sound containment over an in ceiling speaker. Am I right in that thinking? I realize it's difficult to quantify the difference this is going to make on the upper floor but anecdotally speaking; if I install a 3 layer backer box in the joist with a boxed speaker will the results be satisfactory? Anyone with real world experience to share?


2.) Seating is fairly tight to the back wall with only 3' of separation between the wall and seating position. The soffit will extend from the back wall 30". If I move the speaker from the rear soffit (not the cantilever as the rear soffit serves no purpose i.e. it is inside the sound proof envelope) to the ceiling, it will essentially be directly above the listening position. So, what's the lesser of the 2 evils; installing the speaker in the rear soffit with little separation between the rear speakers at 40" high and the top of the head or installing into the ceiling for more separation but positioning them directly above head?

 

[Gouie]

I had a pretty good day yesterday considering. Am I the only one that spends 3 times as long as they think they will on something only to redo it all because you didn't like how it turned out? I wired up the switches for the circulation fans today. After finishing the gang box install and running of all of the wiring I decided I didn't like the location of the switches relative to the speed controllers so; all of the wiring was re-run and the gang boxes reinstalled. The original boxes were meticulously installed to ensure the face plates for the speed controllers would line up perfectly side to side. This box location is now going to house the regular switches feeding the speed controllers so the boxes had to be ganged.

Here is the new mess of wires

Finishing up the wall behind the screen means having to give up my temporary lighting. It'll be work lights from here on out until the permanent lighting goes in. The dead vent is also close to complete. The word to summarize this part of the build is over engineered. I couldn't have imagined this would take as much time or material to complete. With the soffits lining up the way they do and me wanting to save some space in the neighbouring room I decided to go with a dead vent soffit of sorts to run the duct to the dead vent. I thought it would be easier to build the soffit in pieces, not only because of the weight but it would be easier to get the dimensions exactly as I need them.

This is 1 of 3 pieces of the soffit that contains the part of the duct that enters the dead vent.

Next the piece that runs the width of the vent

The last piece will join the soffit to the room. I haven't installed it yet because I'm still struggling to find a piece of PVC to marry the duct through the wall. Thanks for the ebay links but after conversion and shipping it's running about $50 for a foot. I just can't justify that spend. The distance is very short, even less than a foot so I may try to track down a piece of transition PVC. Maybe it will be a little more reasonable.

So things are moving along with the dead vent and I'm close to finally having fresh air in there. With the dead vent soffit mounted I did realize a pretty silly mistake. There will be no way for me to reach through the front of the vent and the 6" passage to the connector that joins it to the main vent closet to attach the duct. Not to mention the connector I used does not have a way of joining the duct on the other end. Wow, how in the world did I think that was going to work? Not a big deal, I'll just pull the connector out and run the duct straight through, just more time wasted.

Today I hope to get the fans mounted and switches engergized - we'll see!

 

[Gouie]

Had a great day today, very rewarding. The first hour was consumed cleaning the space. Man, it was looking like a bomb had gone off. With that out of the way I spent the rest of the day getting the dead vent functional. Installation of the fans was pretty straight forward. I was trying to come up with a creative way of mounting them, then I emptied the box they came in. They came with mounting brackets that use rubber grommets to keep the fan from contacting the bracket itself. That made mounting a breeze and there is no vibration. I wasn't sure of how to tack the electrical inside the vent. Any thoughts?

Next step was to wire them up. I have them being fed first from Insteon switches then to variable switches. The reason for the Insteon switches is to allow me to turn them off and on as required. I have a single duct feeding heat in to the room but I'm not using a traditional cold air return. Instead I'm going to leverage the circulation fans. So, when the furnace is running I'll turn the feed fan off leaving only the return running. When the furnace is not running I'll have both the feed and return fans running.

I fired the fans up without any duct installed and I was pretty worried about how loud they were. Pretty grateful that I'd taken the time to build the enclosure at that point. I spent the next few hours running all of the duct. I may have gone overboard with the turns and bends but oh well. There's roughly 50 feet of duct in that box!

I still need to figure out the best way of running the duct through the wall but this will work for now.

I'm amazed at how quickly the air changed. Running the fans for about an hour the room was completely different - fresh. It will make working in there much more enjoyable. I'm also very relieved that after connecting the duct work the noise from the fans is considerably lower and, even with the 25 feet that the return line is running through the soffit then another 25 feet of looping and bending through the dead vent, the volume of air being pulled out of the room is incredible. I'll certainly have to play with the speed of the fan once everything is closed up but it's nice to know I have the volume if I need it. One thing I find a little strange about the fans is a humming that they make when turning the speed down. At full speed there is no hum but the noise from the air movement at the fan is high. turning the speed down even just a little and the noise from the air movement is considerably lower but replaced with this hum.


Still work to be done; stuffing the dead vent with insulation, closing off the soffit on top of the vent, figuring out what I'm going to do to run the duct through the wall and closing the vent itself up. I'm going to try to come up with some sort of door that has a tight seal in case I have to get to the fans but that can all wait. The next course of business is drywall - I can't wait any longer!

 

[Methodical_1]

Man, you've gone through a lot with your Bungalo. When you finish, the Wifey better let you enjoy the fruits of your labor. I responded to your question over on the Atmos thread.

Btw, I would make sure to have a return and register if you HVAC can handle it to keep the air moving.

Have fun.

 

[Gouie]

Man, you've gone through a lot with your Bungalo. When you finish, the Wifey better let you enjoy the fruits of your labor. I responded to your question over on the Atmos thread.

Have fun.

It's definitely been a learning experience. Not that the house is a lemon by any means but man, I sure wish the inspector we paid way too much for would have caught some of this. It may not have swayed us from buying but at least we'd have known. I have to say, my wife is great, she's tolerating me through this process. At this stage of the build it's all "plumbing" as they say, nothing shiny. After a full day's work I like to take her through what I've done and she tries, but until there's paint on the walls it's just me downstairs playing with my tools.


I saw your response in the Atmos thread, thanks. I'm going to take your advice and mount in the ceiling. I have to admit the whole Atmos thing still has be scratching my head a little. I thought about ditching it all together but if I'm going through the pain of a build like this I don't want to be tearing down the ceiling in a year to retrofit a few speakers.


My 2:00 am wake up call this morning had me thinking more about my door situation. The original plan has been to install a big, beefy, multi-layer MDF door, somewhere around the 3.5-4 inch thick range. I got to thinking that maybe the easier approach would be to go with thinner 1.75" communicating doors. I don't have framing inside of framing i.e. the theatre framing shares the framing with the neighbouring room however; for whatever reason the previous owner framed this shared wall with 2x6. So, the framing at 5.5" + clips/channel at 1.75" + DD at 1.25" - I have a total wall thickness of 8.5". Take two 1.75" doors and I'm left with a 5" space between the two doors. With your average door knob being under 3" there's more than enough clearance.


What I am unclear of is the impact this would have on the decoupled space. I realize the best scenario for communicating doors is to use separate framing or a room within a room but that isn't my case. So, what is the difference between from a decoupling/re-coupling perspective, between communicating doors or a single honking door? I could use some guidance - is my rationale correct?


1.) Single door. The door will be installed with screws through the hinges, into the 2x6 framing. This should not couple the jam to the interior room because there are no jam anchor points past the clips/channel. Any finishing of the jam like trim for example, should not be an issue because the interior walls will be finished with treatments. I haven't completely thought this through yet but if I use door trim I would see it attached to the jam and overlapping the wall treatments therefore no coupling.


2.) Communicating doors. Both doors will be installed in the same manner with screws through the hinges into the 2x6 framing. As with a single door, there should be no re-coupling occurring because there will be no anchor points past the clips and channel. I had thought that the best approach to communicating doors would be to use 2 jams but thinking this through, I'm not sure that's necessary.


I cannot think of any difference between theses two approaches from a decoupling perspective. Am I missing something?

 

[Gouie]

A great informative thread here; http://www.avsforum.com/forum/19-de...tion/2470321-what-s-good-door-stc-rating.html. Mike has a real world example of the benefit of communicating doors even though the jams have not been de-coupled. This will be the route that I take for a few reasons:


1.) The local supplier that I use can only do 1 3/8" thick I will add a layer of 1/2" to not only add mass but it will allow me to use GG between the layers as well.


2.) Two doors will be much lighter and easier to manage than a 4" chunk of MDF.


3.) I think the previous owner saw the basement as an opportunity to learn DIY; I'm uncovering some very odd things including framing that is far from plumb. Unfortunately in the planning stages I paid very little attention to this area. I will have to re-inforce the door frame and fix the level/plumb but with a door at half the originally planned weight I should be able to do this without reconstructing the entire frame and damaging the other room. I know, sounds petty but the adjoining room took 2 months out of my theatre build; I don't want to redo if at all possible.


4.) With two doors, the interior door will be flush to the wall on the inside. This leaves options wide open for sound treatments on the door to match the depth of the treatments on the wall. I haven't gone through the mirror trick yet but the door is very close to my first reflection point.


I'm picking up the first door today so I'll have a better idea of whether or not this approach will work. One thing I'm unsure of is how to make the addition of the 1/2" sheet of MDF seemless. I'm thinking some sort of filler, even bondo but will have to do some research, and research door sweeps, seals, knobs, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Gouie]

Any advice on door seals? I like the concept of the sweep that is recessed into the bottom of the door but am wondering how well they work. Also, I'm reading a lot about pretty elaborate - and expensive - door seals. Granted, they look a lot better than the off the shelf stuff at the big box stores but are they worth the premium?

I thought that communicating doors would come out a little cheaper than a large, single door but that might not be the case. I was getting quotes around $1500 for a 3.5" door. I picked up my 1 3/8" door yesterday at a cost of $275. Add another $50 for an additional 1/2" sheet of MDF and a couple tubes of green glue and I'm at $325. Add $100 for hinges - $425. Add $300 for sweep and seals - $725. Times 2 - $1450.

 

[Gouie]

And looking for more opinion. One of the biggest challenges I have is the working around the material and tools that have to stay in the room with me. Working around a pile of drywall is tough so I am working at hanging clips, channel and the first layer of drywall one wall at a time.

Is there any real con to continuing with the second layer of drywall on the walls and soffits before tackling the ceiling? I know hat means the wall to ceiling joint won't be staggered but is that a big concern? This approach would shrink the pile of drywall enough to move to accommodate a drywall lift.