Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler My display is dying

Glad your having fun with this. It's so much more fun to renovate when it's to bring more fun instead of just because your 70's green colored fridge finally died and nothing matches anymore.

Your right, my room is very light controlled. Basement with just one window shaded by the outdoor deck so it's easily made as dark as I want it. The Wilsonart Designer white works awesome in a dark environment. Grey certainly may suit better if you don't have the same advantage.

Currently I have the screen off the wall and the projector down as I FINALLY, years later, am finishing the trim and bar ad stuff. It went a long time half finished but functional. I've always been too ashamed to post pictures.

Its nice to be a little excited about the theater again. Maybe this is the push I need to get my livingroom/theater cleaned up as well.

How big is your screen Murph? Have you had any issues with sagging at all. It seems that some have, but I don't know if that was for a very large screen.

Although I heard of people ordering bigger at the time, the longest I could source was a 96x60 sheet. This limited me to a max of 96x54 for a diagonal size of 110.25 inches at 16:9.

However, I wanted to put a small portion of the material under the lip of the screen trim to help hold it down flat so I used a calculator, similar to this one, to figure out the height after losing .25 to .5 inch per side. I can't remember what I settled on, not that it would make a huge difference.

Screen Size Calculator

No issues with sagging yet. I made a really tight frame of MDF boards, pocket hole screwed together. I probably went overboard with the bracing in the middle but more had to be better, right?

I used a spray adhesive to glue the material to the frame. You will want help with that part and since the material comes in a roll, you will want to spread it out and pre-flatten it for a while, if you have the room. I skipped that step but I recommend that you do not.

I ran the outside trim pieces across my router table to cut out the recessed lip that covered the screen material. I wrapped the trim in a dark black material so it took some test cuts on scrap wood to get just the right depth to add pressure to the screen but stay flat.

To hang it I made french cleats into the top rail in back (a simple 45 degree angle on the bottom edge.) You have to plan your bracing accordingly to leave room for a couple of good size pieces to lock down into the other opposing angle cleats boards screwed into the wall. Lays flat on the wall, is very sturdy and makes for simple removal, should a reason ever come up.

Hey, thanks for the detailed reply Murph. It really helps.
That is exactly what I want to do, except I want to use aluminum to keep the frame light. The plan was to use square tube for the main frame and then some 1/2" angle around the edges clamped and screwed to the main frame to help hold the laminate in place. I was thinking of using double sided sticky tape between the frame and the laminate on the back and between the laminate and the 1/2" angle to hold the laminate in place.

I had read that using adhesive on any frame cross braces led to waves in the laminate. That may be because people were using pine lumber for the frame and running into moisture induced warpage.


Wilsonart has a location in Toronto. I guess I should call and talk to them about what to do.

I've been to that calculator a number of times now when looking at what space I have available.


That's good to hear. What centers did you run on your bracing?

What spray adhesive did you use?

I had also considered gluing the laminate to a 1/4" ply backer, but read the adhesives you had to use create a LOT of fumes. Was also not confident that I could do that without causing bubbles between the laminate and backer. Really, If I can avoid using a backer I want to just to keep down on the weight. Getting something larger than 4x8 play would also probably be quite expensive.


Biners and eye hooks! It came to me this afternoon that I could use caribiners and eye hooks to hang this thing and to hold it when folded up. Devilishly simple yet quite strong. I could even go with desinger biners to add some flash to the mancave.

I think this might just work. The next step is to see what I can get from Wilsonart and see if there is an adhesive I can use for aluminum (other than sticky tape).

I guess I should really open a thread in the HT subforum unless the mods can move this thread there.

From some poking around on the internets, it looks like 3M makes some interesting spray on adhesives including stuff that bonds differing materials like aluminum and counter top laminate.

I dare not hit the quote button again. Too much work to keep breaking all that up.

You should be able to ask any friendly custom kitchen shop to sell you a roll of laminate. That's what I did. Took a few days as they had to order some in for that particular color.

I used MDF for the center braces as well. Like you, I was concerned about warping and MDF should never warp unless it gets saturated. I wasn't worried about swinging it up so weight was not a concern. Maybe not a good choice for you as it would be too heavy to 'comfortably' swing up to the ceiling on a regular basis, but it could be done and could double as a home gym exercise.

I used 3m spray. I "think" it was 3m 90. Probably overkill again but it has the best resistance to moisture. (screen shifting paranoia again)

Like you, I considered glue but also worried about flatness. You can use a brush but spray seemed easier.

Thanks for answering all my questions Murph. I'm going to start a proper thread in the Home Theater sub forum. I may end up going in a different direction. Stay tuned...