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Gee, where to begin. I guess I'll start with the house. Some other family speced the house out, then their deal fell through. By the time we took over the contract the house was already sheetrocked. The lot backs to open space; woods in this case. The original buyers chose not to put windows facing them. We had a 17' x 22' cave. Why not make a theater there? It's already light controlled. I started off with CADD plans; I'm an old-school CADD tech (I started using AutoCAD in 1987, version 2.16, for those interested.) and I had scanned floor plans of my house. I imported them into Map 2006 and rubber-sheeted them to roughly match the dimensions listed.
As you all know, the Internet was a great source of information about building a home theater. Too much information, sometimes. Initially I wanted a plasma screen downstairs. At the time (2002 or so), 50" was as big as they came. 16 grand, IIRC. Gramophone was the local store I was visiting regularly, and as a HT shop they have many viewing rooms set up. One in particular was styled like what I wanted. I asked my wife to come by, as I wanted her comfortable with what I wanted to do. She insisted I wanted to show her hardware, which honestly wasn't the case. Anyway, she liked the room, but asked what kind of display device I had in mind. I showed her a couple of plasmas. She went back to the room I liked, which had a projector, and asked why I wasn't getting one of those. Good question. Once I decided on a projector, I had many more questions; What type (CRT, LCOS, DLP) What size screen? What brand? Most importantly, what price? By this time we had already completed the deck, over budget, so compromises needed to be made. More importantly, I had no idea how much a "good" projector costs. The guys at Gramophone gave me lots of model numbers, but no help in telling me what the differences between them were. The contractor had started phase two, and I needed to tell him where everything had to go. To make a long story short, before I learned enough to be an educated consumer Gramophone had a fall clearance. A Runco CL-700 demo unit was on sale for $4000, down from the MSRP of $9,995. I bought it, un-demoed as it was in the Timonium store, and I was in Columbia. Now I had screen questions to answer. I got the projector home, set it up on the bar and aimed it at the far wall. It looked pretty cool just on the wall (builder's paint, and a few crayola designs, courtesy of my two kids.) Being a guy, I made the picture as big a possible; in this case about 120" diagonal. My wife thought it was too big. I did some more research online and found out she was right (as usual). Based on my room size and the fact that the bar was already against the rear wall my seating location was about 10' from the screen. The general rule is you want the seating no closer that 1.5 x screen width. Working backwards I ended up with a 90" diagonal screen. I rounded up to 92" because the math works out better; that's 80" wide by 45" tall, in a 16:9 aspect ratio. I tried to figure out the throw distance mathematically, but wound up just placing my projector on a ladder (and a bunch of books) and moving it until I got the 92" screen to be in the middle of my zoom range. I also bought a ceiling mount from Gramophone (non-Runco). It used a piece of common pipe for the downrod. I painted it with Rustoleum texture paint to match the projector.
As far as the screen, Gramophone quoted me on a $2,000 Stewart Screen-Tek. (90", coincidentally). As money was tight anyway I did some more research and found Screen Goo. For $200 I got a complete kit; primer, paint, roller, black border paint, and a foam brush. It works great, looks great, and saved me $1,800. I went with CRT white, as opposed to gray, based on the fact that my projector is a first-generation HD DLP, and not as bright as the newer models.
The rest of the equipment was easy; I already had the A/V Receiver; a Denon AVR-5700. This is an older model, but it has built-in Dolby Digital RF decoding for Laserdiscs. I also had a Pioneer CLD-703 Laserdisc player with the Precision Laserdisc AC-3 output mod. For speakers I always wanted Polks, and the local Circuit City had a special on in-wall units which I was considering for upstairs as well. I got four RC-65i's and two RC-55i's for the rear surrounds upstairs. The deal was a free subwoofer with a $400 purchase, which I qualified for. Since the surrounds I was buying were the same price I got them for free. Tweeter was having a similar deal I demoed some RTi-6's, and liked them. I got a PWS-10 sub gratis with my towers. I wasn't planning on using a subwoofer upstairs, but for free... I liked the reviews of the CSi series center channels so I got a CSi-3 for upstairs, a CSi-5 for downstairs, and a PWS-505 for the basement as well. I ordered these from J&R. I got one more PWS-10. I tried to work a deal, but they wouldn't budge. I sold it for $50. After the holes for the surround speakers were cut, it was apparent that the right one wouldn't fit flush with the wall because the wall was too shallow. (The Ryland plans called for the studs to be laid flat against the foundation.) Dimitri was originally going to extend a wall to make up the depth, but when his son Dino cut the drywall he test fit the speaker. He had a brilliant idea; chipping away the foundation with a hammer to clear the woofer was all that was needed to make the speaker fit flush. That saved a lot of time and money.
I decided to go with a 5.1 setup initially. Since the rear wall adjoins the unfinished area I could cut speaker holes and run speaker wire at any time. Also, my A/V receiver is only 5.1. Finally, I don't own any 7.1 (or even 6.1) movies. I'm sure when HD establishes itself that will change. From the internet I found out I didn't have to spend a lot on speaker wire, and I learned how to run a subwoofer cable using RG6 I already had. All I had to do was buy some additional tools, which I didn't mind. Phone and network I knew how to do from my day job. I planned on using the Spacer System from Lutron for lighting control. The equipment rack was wall cabinet made house network servers. I had Dimitri build a shelf in the unfinished basement for it to rest on.
As far as the interior design on the room was concerned, I sought
professional help. Since we already had the bar I wanted the rest of the room to
be designed around it. One of my coworkers used a professional interior
designer,
Lynn Forconi. I scheduled her to come over one afternoon. Susan
happened to be home, so I asked her if she wanted to sit in. In short, Lynn was
amazing; full of personality and ideas. Since the walls were still in builders
white, she drew right on them! She took my ideas, embellished them and tied
everything together. There were only minor changes from her original sketches; I
changed the ceiling color to black after seeing the reflections (on the
unpainted drywall) from watching a
movie. Based on Dimitri's suggestion, we moved the sink. Based on my inability
to find exactly what I was looking for, I changed the design of the sink as
well. Once I had the projector located it was obvious that it wouldn't fit
behind the planned bar valance, so we deleted it. Time and money were tight,
anyway. The room is painted in three colors; tan, black, and red/brown. We used
Behr Premium Plus pastel base from Home Depot. The finishes were eggshell for
everything but the ceiling; which is flat. |
