witheygull's theater room

[witheygull]

Most of my time here on this forum is spent lurking, with some occasional postings of a helpful or (hopefully) humorous nature. Now, however, I want to publicly document the transformation of the theater room in my new house.

I didn't take a true before picture, but here's the room with minimal work done to it:



The white area in the corner is where a gas fireplace used to be. I paid to have that removed and then replaced the missing baseboard sections myself. I also personally removed shoe molding from the bottom of the baseboard all around the room.

A constant thing throughout this process will be figuring out what I will do myself versus what I'm paying other folks to do; for some things I pay the iron price, for others I pay the gold.

The black electrical outlets and light switches visible on the walls I had an electrician install, replacing the white fixtures that were there before. He also removed the track lighting that was on the ceiling and put up the ceiling fan that's now there (it's hard to see in the picture due to the lighting).

[witheygull]

And here's where we're at now after professional painters have done their work:



Next up will be carpet which should hopefully happen this week.

[superpacman]

[BluBlazes]

Looking good! Thanks for sharing.

[witheygull]

The carpet is in:



The lighting made the photo misrepresent the wall and carpet color to some extent (due to the limitations of my phone's camera and my own shortcomings as a picture-taker). The wall color in real life is closer to the darker red you see in the second photo I posted here, and the carpet is also a deep red.

Wifey thought I was nuts for wanting a red carpet, and she was advocating for a dark grey. I let her pick the paint colors for most of the rest of the house (provided she didn't choose something I truly despised), so she was fine letting me have the black ceiling, red walls, black trim, red carpet scheme I wanted for the theater room. Compromise--it's what makes marriage work.

I'm very happy with the look and feel of the carpet, but it was way more difficult finding a reliable installer than it should have been. The house is not too far from Dalton, Georgia which bills itself as The Carpet Capital of the World; a boast grounded in reality as Wikipedia claims 90% of the world's carpet production occurs within a 65 mile radius around this one small city. Manufacturing and sales are a different beast from installation though; I went through several installers that flaked out on me before finding someone who actually wanted to do some work and take my money.

Next step will be actually moving in to our new house.

[witheygull]

I moved into the new place yesterday.



It's going to be a while before I can unpack enough to use this room for its intended purpose rather than storage.

[roar]

I love the look of freshly laid carpet! I think it looks good with the red walls... once the lights go down, you won't notice any colour at all! Looking forward to more updates.

[witheygull]

Originally Posted by roar

I love the look of freshly laid carpet! I think it looks good with the red walls... once the lights go down, you won't notice any colour at all! Looking forward to more updates.

Thanks. The overall goal is to have the projection screen be the only thing that can draw your eye while watching stuff.

The 70" TV against the back wall is what I'll be working with (once I clear some more boxes) until I can get a new screen for the projector. My old house is going up for sale soon, and I'll be splurging on some new A/V gear once that place sells.

[witheygull]

After being in the new house for almost a week, wifey and I finally got to sit down and watch a movie.



All of those boxes (most of them filled with books) from the previous photo were still in the theater room this morning. I moved all boxes out, unpacked the A/V gear, wired everything up, and vacuumed the carpet.

All that on top of unpacking other stuff around the house--this was not an easy day. My knees tomorrow may not think kindly of my decision to move every book we own today.

Next up will be getting a longer HDMI cable to replace the one you can see running across the floor under the left section of the loveseat. That's a tripping hazard right now, so I'll replace it with one long enough to run along the wall. After that will likely be some weather stripping on the door to the right of the TV (it's an exterior door and some light bleeds in around the edges), and then some blackout curtains for the two windows.

[CtrlCtrlFast]

Originally Posted by witheygull

After being in the new house for almost a week, wifey and I finally got to sit down and watch a movie.

well, what did you watch?

[witheygull]

Originally Posted by CtrlCtrlFast

well, what did you watch?

We streamed the French animated movie Tales of the Night via the Criterion Channel. Streaming was the only option since all of my discs are still boxed up (hopefully I'll be able to unpack them this week).

[witheygull]

I put up curtains yesterday. One of the curtain rods that came from the old house was too long, so I cut it down using an oscillating multi-tool (get yourself one of these if you are a homeowner). The blackout curtains came from the previous house, but I may change them out for some red ones at some point to add a Lynchian touch to the room.

I added a longer HDMI cable and installed some weather stripping around the exterior door today. I wanted to install a door sweep today as well, but the big box hardware store I went to for the weather stripping didn't have any black sweeps in stock. I ordered one online and once that gets here I believe I'll have total light control in the room.



And here's the reverse angle:

[witheygull]

Just some minor tweaks to the theater room over the past week, nothing that merits new photos though. However, today I finished unpacking and arranging the movies:



There isn't a suitable wall in the theater room to display the collection, so it hangs out in the living room.

The shelves are three custom units that I built a little over three years ago. Here's some additional photos of the shelves for those who are interested (using spoiler tags for the sake of those who aren't).

Empty racks:

[Show spoiler]

Trim detail:

[Show spoiler]

How they looked when first installed in the space they were built for:

[Show spoiler]

[witheygull]

We're finally back in the projector game after going without for almost a month.



Wifey and I spent most of yesterday assembling the screen, rearranging and wiring speakers, mounting the screen and projector, and doing the most basic projector calibrations (does a 16x9 image fill the screen and is it in focus).

The 120" screen is acoustically transparent so it hangs in front of the front speakers. Having the speakers behind the screen was the only way to get a screen that large for the room. Here's what the setup behind the screen looks like:



The left and right speakers with their corresponding Atmos buddies are resting on the ends of a pair of 2x6 boards which span across two small tables and support the stands holding up the center channel speaker in the gap between the tables. Blackout curtains left over from our previous house are draped over the tables and boards so that none of it is visible from the viewing area.

The brackets attached to the wall I had to buy, but all of the wood is scrap I had on hand from prior projects. I used another piece of wood for the projector installation:



Where I wanted to put the projector was in between the ceiling joists, so I nailed a board to the joists and screwed the projector mount into the board. The board had two curves cut into it on one end and was square cut on the other end; I cut curves into the square end for symmetry's sake and painted it black to match the ceiling.

[witheygull]

Here's how the blank screen looks from the loveseat with low level lighting:



And here's the same angle showing a Blu-ray menu page with the room lights off:



The driving principle for me with this room is to create as immersive of a viewing experience as possible (within the confines of my resources), and we're getting pretty darn close to reaching that goal.

[witheygull]

Today was replace shiny doorknobs day.

One of the before knobs:



One of the new matte black ones:

[Barry_NJ]

Not a huge fan of the color, but nice work just the same!

[roar]

Things are looking good, those speakers look high especially the centre channel, seems like it would firing right over the seating area?

[witheygull]

Originally Posted by roar

Things are looking good, those speakers look high especially the centre channel, seems like it would firing right over the seating area?

The speakers are indeed about a foot (~30cm) higher than would be ideal (though it doesn't really bother me when watching stuff). The entire behind the screen array was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but has endured longer than I thought it would.

Our previous house is taking longer to sell than anticipated, but once we get the windfall from that transaction then I'm getting some new speakers and will build appropriately sized supports for them.

[witheygull]

Originally Posted by Barry_NJ

Not a huge fan of the color, but nice work just the same!

You're in the same boat with my wife; she's come to accept it, but red walls and carpet were not what she would have gone with. The shade of red on the walls doesn't quite go with the carpet as much as I'd like, so that's something I may redo down the road.

For your setup I like the curtains flanking the screen, and I'm envious of some of your gear.