Home Theater Design & Construction

The construction of the theater came after the gym, and I'm very glad that it did. I wanted to do a good job here, so the experience with the gym helped immensely.

Design

There were a few interesting design considerations that I had for this room, and many options that I thought over before deciding on a room layout. The bare room itself is about 12' x 19', so I obviously wanted the projection screen to be on one of the 12' walls.

As you can see, one of those walls runs on the same wall as the stairs, so my first thought was NOT to put the screen there, simply because I anticipated that I would buy floorstanding speakers...and it wouldn't be good to run into a speaker as soon as you came down the stairs.

I also knew that I'd have to bring the other 12' wall out a couple feet from the concrete to accommodate the fuse box and water meters. Once I realized I'd have to do that, my original plans changed. The idea of a built-in media rack appealed to me, as did a projector located behind a wall rather than mounted to the ceiling. So my plans reversed.

I decided to build two built-ins - a bookshelf to hold DVD's and a rack to hold all the AV equipment. I also planned to build a basic wood mount to sit the projector behind the wall. I then started looking at in-wall and on-wall speakers since bookshelf or floorstanding models were out of the equation now. I decided to go with on-wall for two reasons - first, while in-walls appear to be getting much better, the sound quality is still going to be better for boxed speakers; second, if we ever move, it's a lot easier to take the on-wall speakers with me while still leaving the room complete (i.e., no speaker holes).

Construction

Wall construction went very smoothly here; besides having to work around a water pipe, I had no trouble building the frames for the walls. The only issue was by the stairs - furring strips were used on the wall of the stairway, and I used 2x4 studs. So the joining of the two wasn't smooth - I had to have an extra corner to deal with.

For the ceiling, I decided to make it one level and to keep it as high as possible. I had some ducts to work around, so I had to bring the ceiling down a bit. To do this, I raised a 12' long stud in the middle of the room and attached it to the side walls with joist hangers and to the floor joists with scrap 2x4 pieces. I then attached joist hangers to it and to the front and back walls. This allowed me to create a fairly strong support structure for my ceiling. This pic should give you a decent idea of what I did:


Next up was the wiring. Obviously, I wanted to run speaker wire in the walls for my speakers, so I bought 14-gauge UL2 wire from Firefold.com. Since it's recommended to keep all your speaker wire runs the same length (i.e., the center speaker wire should be the same length as the surround wire), I measured the farthest distance I'd have to go from a speaker to my receiver. In this case, the right front was the farthest away, and it came out to about 32 feet of wire. So I cut 7 pieces of wire 32' long and ran them to the appropriate speaker locations. I also ran a cable for the subwoofer and a cable coax line, even though I wouldn't be needing the latter. I used cable staples to "guide" the route of the wire, but left it loose enough that I could pull the wire out if I needed to.

For the electrical, I ran 12/2 wire for six wall outlets, another one for my projector, and three more behind my AV rack. I used two distinct circuits for this - I think the projector outlet is shared with four other wall outlets, and the AV outlets are shared with the other two wall outlets.

In hindsight, I wonder if the three separate outlets for the AV equipment was the way to go, or if I should've invested in a surge protector instead. Right now, I'm just using the outlets, but would surge protection help?

Finally, I ran 14/2 wire to four spots on my walls - these would be for my sconces. I think I placed the light boxes about 16" down from the ceiling.

I insulated the outer walls (just the two that touch concrete) and the ceiling using R13 insulation. The drywall went up next; no major issues here, and it was a relief to not have to work around any funky areas like in the gym. And I was told by a few people that I did a good job hanging the drywall, so that made me feel good.

I did discover this, though: the hanging of the drywall itself doesn't need to be perfect; it's amazing what can be covered up by a good plaster job. You should make sure to cut your outlet holes well though; I had a couple spots where the hole was too big for the cover - now I've got some patching to do.

After the drywall was finished, painting was the next step. We primed, then painted the walls and ceiling "Bordeaux", which is kind of a dark red. I wanted a dark ceiling, but I knew a black ceiling wouldn't be approved. So we tried the wall color, but it just didn't look right. We then decided to buy some chocolate brown paint and, using a sponge, applied that on top of the Bordeaux. I think we put 3 coats on the walls, 2 Bordeaux coats on the ceiling, and 2 "sponge" coats on top of that. It was a lot of work, but I like how it turned out.

I did get some black in the room though. I wanted a border for my screen, and since I was building my own screen, I decided to paint the wall behind it black instead of building a frame for it. I expanded the black about 16" on the sides and bottom too; this way, it also does a good job of masking where the on-wall speakers are located. It was definitely a good idea - I'd highly recommend it for anyone building their own screen and using in-wall or on-wall speakers.

Next up was the installation of the built-ins. I detail the construction of those here. The bookshelf was easy to get in; the AV rack wasn't. My measurements were a little tight, and the thing was damn heavy. It took a lot of pounding and trimming, but it got in. It ain't going anywhere either :-)

The baseboard, casing, and crown molding was the final part. The casing around the doorways and cabinets was pretty simple; we used the Victorian-style blocks for the top corners, so I didn't have nearly as many angle cuts as I could have. The baseboard wasn't too bad either; a coping saw came in handy here. The crown molding was a little more complicated (due to a doorway that was too tall for the molding to fit properly), but we used corner blocks, so there wasn't too much cutting involved and it was fairly easy to get up.