Now that my house is in an unsell-able condition, I should probably plan out what's gonna happen next.
I've ordered 5 cases of Green Glue which to my understanding shall be arriving in negative two days.
Next I need to negotiate with the wife over the fate of the windows. The smaller window will get some cheap cellular blinds which will be followed by some aluminum foil covered plywood and burning hatred. From the outside it will look like a normal window, and from the inside it will look ghetto, much like the rest of the room. The foil is to try to keep the Florida death heat out.
The larger window has some unanswered questions. MrsGeek (aka "The Wife") would like it if that larger window could somehow be exposed on demand. Obviously it can't stay like it currently is as light would enter, sound would exit and it would be "sub-optimal" all around. One plan on the table is to have some kind of bizarre hinge system so that panels can open up and expose the window. The other thing is to place upon these theoretical panel things a pair of movie posters. If so, then I'd really like to go for the Star Wars Episode III dual Jedi/Sith posters. They look kinda cool. They are unfortunately at someone's first reflection point so that's going to be be quite interesting to work around.
Next up is at least one additional layer of drywall all around plus some Green Glue. This is a second floor bonus room so the floor is also going to get a second layer of OSB and some Green Glue. Some of the subfloor panels were kinda squeeky so I put 306 screws into the floor. This also means there's no way I'm going to pull up part of the floor and blow some insulation into the cavity underneath. It seemed like too pesky of a job.
The equipment closet will get drywall and GG treatment as well. As it abuts a portion of the house that shares an airspace with the main living area, this will get a third layer of drywall with a second helping of GG. The wall next to it also partially touches this airspace so it too will get a similar treatment.
The no longer existing half wall will be replaced with a double stud wall. Well, a cheesy one at least. With the old half wall, the room was 18 feet 6 inches deep, which frankly could stand to be deeper. For added fun, the room is 16 feet 8 inches wide. If I make the replacement wall too thick then the almost square room will become really too close to being square which is a bad bad thing for bass response. The goal is to make a wall with double layers of Green Glue sandwiched drywall on both sides, and also be stagger studded. I've procured some 2x3s which will get nailed onto a 2x4 border. It won't be perfect, but it will be better than a single stud wall. I also need to put in a little window because the projector is going to get mounted over the stairs, and hence outside the room which makes for a nice hushbox.
An exterior grade door is in order as well. The inner surface will likely also receive a dose of Green Glue and a sheet of plywood.
Somewhere in here I should deal with the ceiling. It's currently vaulted. I was thinking about changing it over to being a tray ceiling by building downward and feature a starfield in the middle. I've been oogling a starfield for some time now and this is my chance. I like Reuben's idea of using the tray portion as a gigantic bass trap, and I shall be pilfering that idea.
Next up is an unordinary amount of risers. The final plan isn't quite mapped out, but pretty much the entire room will be a riser of some sort. The only portions that will be at a semi-normal floor height will be the front part of the room where the first row of seats are going. The plan is to give that seating area a sunken feeling. The rest is either riser, proscenium, or raised walkway. This will all be filled with some kind of fiberglass batting, except for the portions of the proscenium where the mains and sub will go which will get the standard sand treatment which is so popular around here. Once again, this is a second story setup so doing the entire proscenium with sand isn't too great of an idea.
Risers and proscenium are getting a layer of OSB up top, a layer of roofing felt (squeaking is bad) and then a second layer of OSB. At this point I'll probably toss two more layers of OSB and roofing felt at whatever portions of the floor don't have raised flooring of some sort on it. There's living space underneath the theater room so there's probably no such thing as overkill in the sound isolation department. Note to self, make risers and proscenium things extra high to deal with this little fact.
Ohh, I should also go back in time and run the wiring for rope lighting. There's 100' spools of rope lighting at Sam's Club for like $14 which I need to grab before they no longer stock them. While I'm at it, I'll steal another idea from Reuben's thread and put an auxillary A/V input at the base of the riser along with an extra power outlet so that I can plug in random extra accessories like an extra video game system or a camcorder.
Next up is the wall treatments. Nothing special here, just linacoustic up to ear level and dacron batting above that. Cover with some Guilford of Maine wall fabric. If you're a first time reader, the purpose of this is that the GOM fabric is acoustically transparent, so that sound won't bounce off of it. The purpose is so that the sound plows into the linacoustic or dacron material and gets deadened. Echos are a bad bad thing.
The front of the theater will get some black drapes and probably some corner bass traps. Oh yeah, and a screen an some unreasonably large speakers. The planned screen is probably a 134 or 142 inch Carada bright white. Yes I know I shouldn't go that big, no I really don't care about the 1.5 rule. I sit in the front row when I go to the movies.
After that, install the equipment rack, wire some more speakers, mount a rack, shove the equipment into the rack, remember and correct whatever it is I'm forgetting, get the seats delivered, and enjoy. Any questions?
