Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Getting closer – HT pics

Close enough to show off my wrinkled flannel bed sheet screen anyway. I’ve been tinkering on my basement since last February on my days off. I started with bare studs and wiring / pluming roughed in when I built the house about five years ago (procrastinator extraordinaire here). A change in plans from the day I designed this place to what it is now required that I rip out most of the wiring, pluming, vents and a couple walls that weren’t baring walls.

I still need to build the screen, but I’m not sure how big to make it, so I’m playing with the bed sheet. I still need to build the cabinets for the kitchenette and do some serious cleaning throughout the house as there’s sawdust everywhere. But other than that, it’s done enough to where I can kick back and enjoy the spa and HT room.

I think I got carried away with the speakers. Sounds great, but I could have gotten away with much less in a 12’ X 16’ space (it was going to be a bedroom with its own full bath).

I am not photographer and the pictures suck. Especially the screen shot. It looks amazing in person. More to come when I get more time, maybe. I don't have much patience with posting pics.

The Jacuzzi room soffit has green rope lighting. Looks pretty cool and it's pretty darn relaxing with a cocktail on the ledge.

I built the sauna out of a bunch of 2X clear cedar I had left over when I built the deck handrails. I just planed them down. The walls and ceiling stuff I had to buy at a whopping 2.35 a lineal foot. If you ever get the itch to build a sauna, beware....that clear cedar is expensive as hell.













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Man you have got it going on Michael!

Your place looks extremely nice....do you have the Boston Cherry finish on the Axioms? They seem pretty darn glossy in the pics. The HT room turned out very, very nice.

Thanks Richard. They're just the plain ol' Boston Cherrry. Everything but the 80's are from the outlet too. I still can't find anything wrong with them.

I tell ya, 6 and 7 channel music is quite a treat. Now if I could figure out how to arange the mains and sub I'd be happy. I just don't have enough space to do it right. I need a rug too. the front's are too foward with the hardwood floor. I need to build a DVD storage unit for the closet come to think about all the stuff I still need to do....dangit...

Dang Mr. Drew you sure have some nice digs, Good work

Gawjus, Mike!

Wow! Looks good, Mike.

Beautiful Mike, great craftmanship.

It must be nice to have the skills to do such fine work. Congrats!

I like wood. I like this post.

Looks awesome! Are those M2s or M3s in back, and are they on Full Metal Brackets?

How do you like them in back, as compared to another set of QS8s?

Thanks for the compliments. I mostly just ‘wing it’ and try to figure things out as I go along. I’m dumber than a box of rocks for the most part, but can do anything with my hands. My mouth on the other hand….well, I’m just not a very skilled communicator.

I screwed up this link on the first post. It's the entrance door and the bathroom to the left. I couldn't have roughed the surround speaker locations any worse than I have. Between the stinking door and the window on the other wall, I screwed myself pretty good for surround placement. The M 3's sound pretty good, but they're just too close. I'm going to replace them with another set of QS 8's and use the M3's for the other TV upstairs. I'm going to install some W-3's in a pine finish above the Jacuzzi. The white wall plates are hiding some speaker wires and Cat V that go back to my office where I'm going to mount the hardware.

I made the arch out of cedar logs left over when I put the house up. I didn’t want folks to forget they were in a log home when downstairs with all the sheet rock, and I like arches - so I decided to put pine and a few posts where I could. A day with the chain saw, belt sander, orbital sander and about five pounds of sawdust all over me later, it was done. I like the heart wood grain in red cedar, that’s why I ripped the posts. There’s another one in the hallway next to the stairs too.

Yes, the M 3’s are mounted with the Axiom full metal brackets. They are very stout and well made with top notch fasteners.

And how do you know that?

Fantastic, Mike! I envy your skills.

So, do you rent that place out for retreats or anything? Need some help positioning the M80's?

I suppose you fly into Ketchikan and then take a "Puddle Jumper" from there, eh?
(Edit - I see that it is actually a Dehavilland Dash 8 Turboprop from Anchorage)

Beautiful rooms. Enjoy.

Very sweet indeed.

I do have two spare bedrooms Tom. One even has its own bathroom, so feel free to drop by anytime. I’d recommend driving though. The last 60 miles or so to the drive to Valdez is probably the prettiest in the whole state. There’s waterfalls, glaciers, rugged mountain peaks, rivers, canyons, lakes and in the spring, it’s all lush green. It’s like living in a national park. The M80’s aren’t all the troublesome to move around, but you could come up and move the EP600 around for me while I sit on my ass with a drink and the remote in my favorite spot doing some “critical” LFE listening. I’m sure it wouldn’t take but a couple hours to get it positioned right - depending on how fast you can crawl around moving the sub.

I don’t know what to say to you Peter, you dirty old man. I about gagged from laughing too hard while attempting to swallow my coffee. I’m gunna have to remember that one… “cunning linguist”.

Mapquest says: Total Est. Time: 46 hours, 24 minutes Total Est. Distance: 2357.30 miles

But I'll bet I could do it in under 45 hours in summer.

I'll put it on my list of road trips.

Very nice, Mike! Mmmm...I can smell the cedar now! I need to stop looking at all you guys' beautiful theaters. It makes my too jealous!

Hey, that tile looks exactly like mine - Effesso Arena I think it's called

[image]http://f3.yahoofs.com/users/41df9091zccd02444/e2c3scd/__sr_/9404scd.jpg?phYfvEFBHSvUL7T6[/image]

How come the image doesn't show? If I cut and paste the URL it brings up the image.

I can't even make the picture show by cutting and pasting the URL into the browser address bar. Are you sure the picture is available to "everyone" and not just to a logged-in user (you) ?

Yea, won't let me in either. Looks like you need a password, or a secret handshake.

I bought the tile at Home Depot. Don’t recall what the name was. I liked the uneven edges, so I bought it. I’m sorta color blind so I have to ‘wing it’ when it comes to picking colors. Sometimes I get lucky and sometimes I not.

I broke in the sauna last night for the first time. I think I like saunas…… I’ll have to try it again tonight just to make sure. Is it against the rules to drink a cold beer when taking saunas?

I’ve decided to build the screen a standard 16.9 / 1 aspect ratio, 84” wide. I’ve been screwing around with zooming, shifting and screen height. There is no perfect screen size with all the different A/R sources and I just want to hit one damn button on the remote when I kick back and watch something. Until I can afford a good external video processor, a fancy stretch lens and 1080P projector, I’m sticking with what I have and black bars. Maybe by that time affordable 1080P projectors will have native 2.35 AR’s.

Off to build (paint) my screen……..

I thought those pictures were publicly accessible, I guess not. It's just a picture of a shower, I think you guys can live without seeing it. I don't have time to fix it right now.

Here’s a few more pictures. I finished the screen Saturday and have watched a couple movies on it. I tried some DIY screen paint mix that Randy turned me onto a few months ago. It’s called RS-maxsmudd and the guy who came up with it has an even better mix that he sells, which I didn't know until today. If I would have known that, I would have just bought it instead of screwing with mixing paint. I don’t really know what characteristics a good screen is supposed to have, so my opinion is pretty much worthless. But if you want it, I think it’s some great stuff and it really brings out colors and works well with or without light in room. The images are the best I’ve ever seen on a home theater system in person. But I have to admit that I haven’t seen very many so take that for what it's worth. So far three of my friends have been over and all of them want to know where I bought my speakers and if I’d make them a screen.

I figured out pretty quick that either my little Wagner sprayer is a piece of crap or I can’t spray paint, or a combination of both which I suspect is the case because there are some screw ups on the screen. In retrospect, I should have practiced spraying a little, but I was in a hurry so I just winged it. I still don’t know what to do next time, but I do know what not to do. So if you get the itch to try one of these DIY screens, drop me a line and I’ll tell you what not to do. Although I’m enjoying the heck of this system as is, I know that I just have to go the whole CIH thing, so I’ll be building a different screen in a few months after I can scrape up some more money for all the gizmo’s to make that work without too much fiddling.

Some screen shots….





I also tried my hand at making a velvet boarder and figured out that that isn’t all that easy either. Rapping velvet around a compound double mitered corner sucked. Then I had to figure out how to install it on the board, and I figured out how not to do that….



Her's the stairs / hallway to the basement.




Here’s a shot of the other spare bedroom. It has a full bath and cedar lined walk in closet. Tom, you’ll have to bring your sleeping bags, because I’ve got more electronic gadgets to buy before I buy furniture.



This is the kitchette I need to finish. The freezer is quite happy there for now.



Here’s the HT bathroom.




Here’s what I stared out with this last winter……




Now that the basement's about done, I reckon I ought to cut the grass....

Outstanding job Mdrew! It looks fabulous. I love the colors with the wood floor in your theater. I think your screen looks great, would never know it wasn't one of the comercially made screens. You can go into the business!

Congrats on a fantastic accomplishment.

That's wonderful, Mike! I think the screen looks great!

Beautiful room. Beautiful home. Take time to sit and enjoy it, eh?

And I figure one of those inflatable beds would fit as carry-on luggage, so I'm good there.

I painted a whole boatload of louvered doors with a Wagner once. I wasn't very good at it, but it was still better than using a brush. The instruction to "do 400 extremely light coats with low viscosity paint" just wasn't something I had the patience for. Looked like orange peel by the time I was done, but it was fresh, shiny, white orange peel.

I think I'm going to want to hear your story about what NOT to do.

That screen looks mighty fine to me. Congratulations !!

Strong work. It's been said before... there's some amazing talent involved with this site. Congrats on the HT!

What to do based off what not to do learning…….

When the paint color specified has a part number associated with it, you might want to remember that. There are several shades of metallic gold, peril and silver at those craft shops. Asking the lady which gold is pale won’t help.

Read the paint sprayer instructions before screwing up. Hoping that they may help you fix your screw ups after the fact doesn’t help matters. Once you screw up, there’s no going back. They don’t tell you much to begin with come to think about it. It’d be better to just ask someone how to use the damn things that knows. Or better yet, have someone else spray your screen.

Don’t put plastic down on the floor where you will be spraying. That crap is slippery on plastic when you are in a hurry dancing around the sheet with a paint sprayer.

Make sure you don’t sit down on your leather sofa with paint on your ass.

Don’t spray the sheet flat. The damn sprayer runs out of paint and spits out huge globs of paint because you have the stupid thing at an angle. Chances are that by the time you get to the bottom half of the sprayer’s paint can, you are on your finish coat. The sprayer will suck air and spit it out on your sheet along with goobers of paint.

Troweling out the globs doesn’t work no matter how steady you think your hand is. A brush does no better. It’s paint after all, not concrete or plaster. Don’t know what I was thinking, but it most definitely wasn’t smart thinking.

Spaying more paint over the trowel and brush marks in hopes to “spread the screw ups out more evenly” is a bad idea.

If the paint looks wet, it probably is. Touching it to confirm this suspicion is a bad idea. Troweling or brushing out the finger print doesn’t work either. More paint doesn’t work either.

Don’t just wing it. Try to practice your new found skills at spraying on something else first. Something big because these stupid sprayers have a gazillion different things to adjust.

Install the French cleats or other hanging means on the back of the board before spraying it. They are tough to install lying under the board.

Skip the double miters on the trim.

Velvet is awfully hard to keep clean in a garage with sawdust everywhere.

I hope that helps those who are contemplating a DIY screen………

Man your place is extremely nice Michael, the HT room and screen is looking mighty fine ... you have a very good taste in design and it looks as though you put it all together with an exceptional talent. Great job my man!

*It's obvious you are not married, the raised toilet seat is a dead give away.

What are you talking about? The seat's down, but the lid is up. It's in "quick access" mode.

LOL!

Wisdom for the ages, my friend!

Very good points Mike. I've used a sprayer, but not on a screen. I know what you mean about all the settings and ways it can go wrong. It's complicated getting the adjustments for the spray, distance to spray, and angles right.

I could feel of your frustration in reading, especially when you mentioned the slipperly plastic on the floor, followed by sitting on your leather sofa with wet paint.

After all that, the pics of the room and of the screen look excellent. A job well done.

I think I'm finally done messing with this room and buying gizmo's. The 2.35 screen and anamorphic lens is up and I've almost got the VP50 and HD DVD player figured out. I ended up making a projector mount that I can adjust north/south/east/west, up and down, four corner level and move the lens back and forth. The mount I bought was a piece of junk and I couldn't touch it without it moving in the wrong direction.

Here's some pictures. Ya I know. They suck. About all I know how to do is put the camera on auto and push the button.....





Stewart Firehawk 2.35 Screen (96 X 41)



Eagle HD in 1.69



Space Cowboys 2.35/1 HD DVD (non-stretched with the lens in pass mode)



Same shot, stretched



(not sure why this shot does't look bigger, I didn't touch / zoom the camera. You can tell it's bigger by looking at the freeze box though)

Ooooh - freaking - Ahhhh!!

It must be nice to have the skills to fabricate stuff like that, have it work and have it look nice.

Great room. Great setup. I hope you can relax and enjoy it now

Howly mowly! You could easily sell that mount online and make enough money to quadruple your music and video collection, I think. Or fund your wine hobby, or....

But, then, you might not have enough time to enjoy those things. With power, comes responsibility.

You guys are too much. LOL....

Thanks for the compliments.

Relax Tom? I'll get plenty of time for that and sleep when I'm dead. There's too much stuff to do and things to see or learn to relax.

That mount is fantastic. Did you build the speaker stands yourself, too?

Very pretty stuff!