Coming later today (it is 12:45 am here) I will be posting some pictures. I already snapped them, but I can't find the cable to connect to my camera. I WILL find it after I get some sleep.

Anyway, I spent a huge chunk of time building the bass traps and front wall treatment today. It all started with a trip to the fabric store.

I had a couple of 50% coupons, so I got the black cotton fabric that covered the whole acoustic treatments (traps and wall) in a nice wide 108" "roll"...

For the bass traps, I had done a TON of research, and yes, you can do like what other have done and cut out Owens Corning 703 or 705 and make superchunk traps that have the dimensions of 17" x 17" x 24" on the edges, or use some other materials, like the denim insulation in the same triangular dimensions, however it gets compressed under its own weight and can end up costing almost as much as the OC703 once it compresses itself. Plus the denim insulation is nearly impossible to cut with anything but a toothless diamond blade for an angle grinder or circular saw. So more and more research yielded that if I went deeper (and wider) with the bass traps, I could stuff the corners with regular R-30 insulation (pink or yellow stuff that is really cheap)... I like the sound of cheap.

So I put up some 2x2's on the wall that were 24" from the corner. This was going to yield essentially a 24" x 24" x 34" triangular area from floor to ceiling. A decent amount deeper, but I had the space.

So I debated on how I wanted to fill the space. I could cut triangles out of the insulation, but the insulation would compress just like the denim, so instead, I went with the 15" wide R-30 and "hung" it from under the soffits. I was able to hang 2 full pieces (full = 15" wide x 10" thick), and then I took a 3rd piece, cut it into 2 pieces. One piece about 5" wide, and the other 10" wide. I took the smaller one and filled in a spot where the corner was tapering and took the wider one, and put it right in the middle of the front "face". This filled the corner nicely. I wasn't sure how well the fabric would hold the insulation from bulging too much, so I took some good ol' chicken wire, and put that on the front face to allow me to sort of hold it back. Not quite as "clean" as if I used the rigid stuff like the OC703, but this was going behind a false wall, so I wasn't too concerned.

I build up the other side, and then made a large framed section for the rest of the wall. I wanted to cover it with the 3.5" thick denim insulation, but needed to build some sort of structure to it. Probably overkill, but I basically framed up a whole other wall, attached it to the ceiling and used a couple of bracket to hold the bottom in place, filled the cavities with the insulation, and then it was time to cover everything.

So since the fabric was wide enough to go floor to ceiling in one shot, I just lined it up, and started stapling away. Oh, I bought an air stapler. WAY faster than using my electric one, and every staple went in perfectly. No more mis-fires or needing to hammer them in like with the electric stapler.

OK. So the acoustical part is done for the front wall, on to the screen. Staple, staple, staple, and a little while later, the screen material is on the frame. I used some metal French Cleats that I bought at home depot to hang it, so I put them on. I also got the main part of the false wall lined up, assembled together, attached to the ceiling and the floor, and the screen hung.

Wow does the image look SO much better (obviously) than the brown textured wall.

So I have pictures of all of that that I need to get off of the camera.

The "biggies" left to do in the theater are:
*) Make and hang the black panels for around the screen (finish the false wall).
*) Put in my Lutron Maestro IR dimmers.
*) Put up the crown molding.
*) Install the color changing LED rope lighting.
*) Connect the bass shakers to the seats and wire them up.
*) Put up baseboard trim.
*) Install the star ceiling.
*) Calibrate the audio.
*) Calibrate the video.
*) Cover up part of the step lights as they cast a LOT of light onto the screen as well as into the peripheral vision of people in the 2nd row.


Farewell - June 4, 2020