Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Room Layout Ideas Wanted

I like the "build in" look, but maybe for media, instead of building into the wall, I could build ON to the wall like you mention. Sort of like building the soffets after the whole room has been DD+GG'd. Keeps a solid "shell" for sound proofing, but still the internal elements for functionality and style.


Maybe Bob and Mike can just design the darned thing.

I seem to remember reading an article back in the day where Industrial Light and Magic said that all of their effects work on Jurassic Park totaled 9 terabytes. Insane at the time.

So I think that we are now looking at flipping the room... Screen on the right, seats on the left. There is going to be a wet bar to the lower left of the home theater, and I was thinking that while not ideal, I could still bump out an equipment and movie storage in that area, still making staggered walls, and still DD+GG for them. I will be sealing the first layer of drywall with acoustical caulk sealant too. That will keep the equipment in the room, but not up front where I need to worry about LED lights disrupting or distracting from the movies. I will still need to put in some sort of IR repeater (maybe that HDMI one that Randy mentioned earlier). Flipping the room and putting things back in that area would allow for me to build an equipment rack that would accommodate future upgrades or added gear as need be. I am not completely sure on how to make the media and equipment storage look like part of the room. The equipment shouldn't be too bad since things are pretty much all black, but with movies, you have all of the spines on the cases in all sorts of different colors.

I was thinking about using curtains on the front wall to also mask the 2.35:1 screen, and then maybe put 3 columns on each side of the room, and in between the columns, put more of the curtain material pulled tight, but with more width in the curtain that the space I need so that it will be all "pleated" but cleaner than just "hanging" there. Then I could put curtains over the storage/equipment area as long as I had some air flow for the equipment.

Maybe not though since it could either come out neat like a regular movie theater, or end up looking sloppy. Either way, I think that I have a game plan. I thought that I would have been framing it up earlier today, but I wanted to put more thought into things, and decided to finish up framing around duct work and the main drain pipe that comes from upstairs. My wife also wanted a small cubby hole as a decorative element in the family room, so I had to tear out some studs and rework it. Now, I just have a single 9 foot duct that runs right along side of the main support beam that will take about 30 minutes to frame up and then I can start the staggered walls.

I knowingly underestimated on my stud order and will probably run out about 2/3 of the way through the 2 home theater walls, but that is OK. I will only have one more wall and one 10 foot long duct to construct for the game room area and between there and the storage room. My goal is to be 100% framed up by the 20th. That will be 30 days since I got my permit. Then get all of the electrical done in 3 more weeks (I will be out of town for work for 1 week). Somewhere in there I do need to add a window for the bedroom, but it needs to be ordered so it may actually end up coming about the time I am half way through the electrical.

I also need to decide if we are going to remove a 10'8" beam that runs in line with one of the stairwell walls and put in a 14' replacement (had an engineer do all of the numbers for us). The beam rung about $170, but I am a little nervous about having to jack up the trusses about 1/8" in order to pull out the old beam where it rests on the concrete exterior wall, and then manhandle the new one in place just to open things up a couple of feet at the bottom of the stairs. Lots to think about.

Well, the other nasty ductwork framing is done (more to do later) and we started messing around with the home theater size. It is amazing how much easier it was for my wife to visualize the area when I measured, snapped a chalk line, and put down some masking tape (to make it easier to see). Looks like my room gets to be a little bigger! We are now looking at 14 feet wide by 24 feet long. The extra width will be a huge help for screen/front speaker placement as well as well as more space to walk around the front row of seats!

Anyway, time to get back down there are start building some walls.

I just did something similar. It wasn't too bad really. Just braced the trusses with 2x4's and hammered shims to raise it up. Sounds like your task is a little more difficult because of the exterior wall thou.

Before:


During:


After:


Also, you're really making me jealous with all of you talk of sound proofing. I've tried to make minor decisions to help disconnect my basement HT from the upstairs but at best it's going to make so little difference I'm sure everyone upstairs will think they are sitting in the same room.

Yeah, I would REALLY like to do some soundproofing, but the ceilings are so low in the basement to begin with. I don't really have the clearance to make a serious attempt at it.

First wall (or third, depending on if you count the 2 existing exterior walls) is up. Room will be 14 feet wide after the double drywall. The back/left of the picture will be the equipment rack. I decided to just stagger those areas and will DD+GG the inside of the rack area so that it is still at the same sound proofing level as the rest of the room.

I am building shelves into the back wall as well (they will look "built in" but in fact will be mounted in front of this main wall.

Goal is to have the long 24.5 foot (exterior length) wall with doorway framed up before Friday. Then I will work on the last pieces of duct work framing and the final basement wall between the game room and storage area. Then off to California for work next week. I hope to come back to a window to put in (stinking custom order) and will start on the electrical.

We are 99% sure that we want to replace the 10.5 foot beam that links the one side of our stairwell with the exterior wall with a 14 foot beam to open up the bottom of the stairs a little more. I know the process, and even with the (yet to be built) home theater wall helping to hold up the house, and a temp wall as well, I am still nervous about it.

Here is a snapshot of the first (or third) wall...

Yup, there is an empty MAME arcade cabinet and 4-player control panel, oh, and my Theatre of Magic pinball (up on end) in the photo as well.

Got the back wall and equipment walls squared up and attached. Built almost half of the side wall and have it squared up and secured.

I managed to get an extra 3.5" (one 2x4 width) length to the room. Not much, but I'll take it.

Nick,
Just curious - I notice the base plates for the walls are green pressure treated instead of regular lumber. Is that the building code for your area? Where I am we either put regular base plates on top of the sub floor or if going directly on concrete we vapour barrier underneath the bottom plate. The PT idea makes a lot of sense though, even with vapour barrier I'd think.

Green treated is required for code here. Any lumber that is directly in contact (code says "directly attached") to concrete, needs to be green pressure treated. I would love to have been able to use the cheaper, lighter, more size consistent "white board" instead if it just meant adding a vapor barrier.