# Blaze98's Home Theater Adventure



## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

Hello Everyone, 
My name is Brian and I am a Home Theater junkie..I have been attempting to build a dedicated home theater for the better part of 6 years. But with having a wife and 3 kids, a job and bills that is not always easy, especially when you have moved several times in the process. We finally purchased the house we are living in now about 3 1/2 years ago as a Repo home, we decided to live in it as we remodeled it and it was quite an adventure to say the least.

I am going to be upload pictures and telling the issues we came across in the process. a lot of this is from my page at another Forum that I am migrating to this site instead as this is much more friendly of a community I have found.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

I got the Theater Room bug when my wife and I first got together, I purchased a Mitsubishi 65 inch projection TVfor about 3k.... this was about 10 years ago, we just recently got rid of the TV and it still worked perfectly, but after moving 3 times that 700lb TV was not fun to move up and down stairs. So we gave it to someone who could still use it. it still had the original bulbs in it too.



This is where my Home Theater journey started. A modest simple Plasma 42 inch tv I mounted on the wall in my Man Cave in the garage. 




11/23/2010
My wife and i just recent bought a house after fighting with the bank for 8 months on it we finally got it, It was a repo house that had mold issue, but as we were fighting with the bank over it we found out from my parents that my God Parents used to own it and lived there. The house is having the mold removed by a professional company right now while we are on vacation for thanksgiving. The Basement has a room that will be our Media/Theater room. I believe the room is 18x15, has double doors going into it, has some tile and a drop ceiling, the tile and the ceiling are the first to go, but wanted some input and advice as to what you would do to this room. I plan on having a projector and screen.
also going back and forth on carpet or wood flooring and wall color.





still waiting for my account to be updated to allow links to my photobucket account if these don't show up I can fix them tomorrow.


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## JBrax (Oct 13, 2011)

As a Kansas City member I would like to welcome you to our forum. As a Kansas City Royals fan I would also like to give you back David Glass! Please take him back to the executive offices of Wal-Mart.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

JBrax said:


> As a Kansas City member I would like to welcome you to our forum. As a Kansas City Royals fan I would also like to give you back David Glass! Please take him back to the executive offices of Wal-Mart.


:rofl::rofl:
What if we don't want him?.... LOL I have met with David Glass several times, he is a really nice guy. The building I work in is actually named after him. He just has not buisness owning/running the Royals:T


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

1/23/2011
So after we starting the remodel, we found out the house had a lot more mold in it than we had originally thought. A LOT MORE.... so much so that we have to have it professionally re mediated before we could safely be in the house. So several thousand $$$ later. We were able to move in. My wife was pregnant and about to have our youngest child, she was actually born 3 days after we moved in. 3 days after that we have 27 inches of snow. 

I took lots of pictures of the house during and after the remodel, here are some pictures of the Theater Room after we ripped out the oddly places counter can cabinet, and replaced the drywall that had to be cut out of the bottom walls. 










I could not wait to put the tv up in the room just to see how it would look. It helped motivate me to keep going on the room.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

5/09/2011
We are in the next steps of the Theater Room/Media Room build, All the Tile is coming out this weekend. going to sand down that wall, and try to find a color, i have looked all over and am having trouble choosing a color, any suggestions? was thinking a Dark Mocha/ Chocolate, maybe a Slate Grey, or a nice Dark Red, throw me some ideas....

My other issue, after being on vacation and our "friend" was "Watching" the house, and let the dogs pi$$ all over the new wood floor, now it has to be replace in places, anyways, the HDMI port on the above TV the LG 42 inch monitor, some how stopped working and i get no signal at all to the receiver, so i hooked the TV directly to the Blu Ray player still got nothing, so i tried with the component cables and it is working that way for now, my question is... we are wanting to put something alot better in there, my original idea was a Optoma HD20 projector, with the room size it may or may not be a good idea, the ceiling is kinda low, but it would be far enough back and so would the couch that we shouldn't have issues with the picture being blocked by people sitting on the couch because, correct me if I'm wrong, but cant you mount it high up and project it down at an angle and still have a good picture? or other option is a Mitsubishi 73 inch DLP rear projection, we just bought a 60 inch Mitsubishi for our living room and we love it. My wife thinks I will regret the projector, but it will be half the price of the DLP, looking for some opinions had planed to spend about 1400 on the tv and i think i can get the Optoma for about 650-700 range.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

8/04/2011
we are almost done with the house remodel, and hit a few unexpected issues which was expected, and the theater room still is not done  it has been a bed room/shelter (during our tornado outbreak that destroyed Joplin,Mo.) a storage room, and a catch all for everything during the remodel, well we are starting to get it cleaned up and i had all the speakers set up to use on my 42 inch tv, and my amazing wife suprised me with my new tv! 73 inch Mitsubishi DLP tv, and its amazing. it sat in the box for 2 weeks and i couldn't take it any longer and had to set it up, to check it out. here are a few pics.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

12/08/2011
so a little update, we were about a week away from buying the carpet to install in the theater room, and i removed the cabinet to build the media rack, and we found mold. turns out the mold remediation company didn't do everything they were supposed to and some of the mold was not taken care of. so when it was all said and done I found mold in the theater room, bathroom and computer room. and our mold guy is in jail for multiple DWI's. so it looks like i will be doing the mold remediation. here are some picks of what it looks like as of today, the theater has been temporarily moved to the kids play room.











































here is the temp theater set up....


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

2/10/2012








Got the theater room somewhat put back together. we are going to be tearing up the remaining tile to put down carpet, from in the closet, run my cables then paint. i cant wait to be done with this room!!!!










Tile is NOT comming up very easy :angry:









Tile is all broken up.... soon the clean up, then drywall repair ,running wires in the wall , paint, and carpet...


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

2/18/2012
We found out the majority of the moisture/mold was coming from the water/sewer pipe in the wall it somehow came loose from the fitting and had a small leak, they had a cabinet over it and i guess they didn't know about it. Since the house was a repo house the mold sat there in the house for almost 1 1/2 years with no air movement when it was 100+ degrees outside so it got pretty bad. its taken care of now and we are taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. 90% of the plumbing has been replaced 

I had a buddy come over to help me clean up the tile. we had to fill a trash can 1/4 the way up and carry it through the basement and up the stairs and dump it in the trailer to haul off. it was too heavy to fill the trashcan all the way up. but its all out of the room now. I have to use the shop vac and will then start on the wiring and replacing the dry wall. got a color picked out as well.









Tile all cleaned up. Framing closet tomorrow

2/21/2012

Last night I was taking down a stud wall in the bathroom behind the theater room, and was using a splitting maul to take the boards down. Got a little to close to the toilet and bumped it with the edge of the ax. Didn't see any damage so I finished up and turned off the lights and went to bed. My wife just called me at work to tell me I cracked the bowl on the toilet and there is standing puddle of water in the theater room. So I cracked the toilet. At least the carpet was not down yet and I had turned the water off to the toilet last night before I went to bed so it may have saved me from having a flooded theater room. Have a dehumidifier running now to pull the water up..... its always something lol




3/13/2012


Got the floor and studs treated with the moisture sealants and mold sealer, tore down part f the drop ceiling to frame the closet, got about 50% of the closet framed. Going to finish that tonight and drywaller is coming to hang, tape and mud the closet , bath and computer server room/ office tomorrow morning. Then I will work on trim and carpet  going to need some suggestions on placement of speaker plates I the walls. I will post pics of it tonight along with the closet.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

3/31/2012

Ok the Closet is frammed, new drywall installed all holes patched, walls sanded and new texture sprayed, so today we are painting the walls in the theater and my office/server room. I will post pics in a little bit. :rock:hnoes:


4/01/2012

























Walls painted, closet and bathroom doors are installed, next up is trim and replacing the rest of the ceiling tiles and frame the carpet  its starting to come together!


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

5/23/2012
Carpet is now in, Couch is moved in, equipment is set up for temp use.











































































Cables came in. Monoprice.com is amazing. super fast shipping!










Fixin' to install the cabling.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

7/10/2012

Update: we got 80 percent of the cabling ran. I hooked up my 30ft 22 gauge HDMI high speed cable from monoprice and everything was working great got it ran in the wall, everything was hooked up and was really pumped with how everything was looking and working. 4 days ago I was watching a movie with the kids and lost signal to the tv, so i figured a cable had come loose everything was in tight. traced it back to the HDMI cable, it is so thick it was pulling up on the output port on my receiver and loosing signal. I think the cable has a short in it. 

So i contacted monoprice and did their customer service chat, all I have to say is their company is great and everything I order from them I am reminded of why I keep going back. They set up a RMA for the bad cable and told me for my setup I should be using the 30ft Ultra Slim High Performance HDMI® Cable w/ RedMere® Technology 
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
its 46.00 vs the 30.00 for the other cable but it is a normal thickness so I just need to wait for them to get more instock then I will order one. So I guess that means the theater room is down until I get that cable, which isn't so much a bad thing as I will have a reason to do more work on the house 

anyways I will update more photos soon. My wife found alot of Home theater and Cinema signs at Hobby lobby for 50-75% off so we will be putting those up as well





8/23/2012

I am still not done with the Theater Room but its getting closer. I am uploading a few more pics. again all of the cables and kits have come from Monoprice.com!


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

11/17/2012

The theater room is really coming together now  I am about 95% done with the construction side of it and I am now working on the equipment side (speakers) as I realizing that the 7.1 system is not sounding up to par, and the fact that i have mixed brands with my fronts and sub being Cerwin Vegas (at least 10 years old) center a Sony center channel ( 6-7 years old ) and Yamaha satellites as rears and surrounds.

I am waiting to pull the trigger on a pair of POLK monitor 60 series II and a CS2 Center channel. I have them in the cart just waiting to hit purchase hnoes: they have to be better than what i am running now. anyways here is what i have so far :rock:


























































Like i said its getting there...... my middle child had her birthday party at the house today and we had a movie theater themed party with a red carpet and popcorn and candy hotdogs and nachos, it was great and the 10 kids that were here laying on the floor had a blast watching LION KING on the 73 inch TV.:rock:

Don't mind the mess in the media closet, had a switch go bad on us and i had to re run some cabling and don't have it hidden and tied back yet.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

12/26/2012
Ended up buying Polk Audio monitor 60's and a CS2 Polk Center Channel right after Christmas from Amazon and got an amazing deal on them, I will update pictures as soon as I can.


4/13/2013
it has been a while since I was able to update, not much has changed in the movie room right now as we have been so busy with life.... I did add a new piece to the room 

Finally got some pics off my phone of the Prosub 800 I have better ones I will post tonight. This thing packs a massive punch and I can't believe the sound from something this small. Not bad for something I picked up for $107.00 on clearance at Best Buy. Amazon shows it books for 400.00 http://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Tec...rds=prosub+800
Has a few chips in the wood as it was a display model and the fact it's white and stands out like a sore thumb with all my black equipment but I love it.... Will post pics of my new Polk center and fronts 
Tonight


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

9/22/2013

Update:

The theater room is about 95% done, well WAS about 95% done. We have a dehumidifier in the room that runs when we are not using it, my wife emptied it and spilled a little water on the carpet. I cleaned it up when I got home and didn't think anything of it. 2days later I was paying the PS3 and walked out if the room and noticed the floor was wet still. Got down and felt the floor and it was really damp, did a little searching and my DVD shelf and another shelf were wet and had soaked up water. I went in the room that is behind that wall and its where our air conditioner and furnace are, the condenser pump had gotten clocked and the water had no where to go for 3 days and backed up and leaked water under the wall and the thick carpet pad soaked up all the water. The trim is ruined both shelves are ruined nd the drywall will need replaced possibly. Pulled the carpet up and had to remove 1/3 of the pad . They are coming out to replace the pad this week. I'm including pics.


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

10/20/2013

good news is the damage isn't as bad as we thought it was. it was still a hell of a mess but we were able to save the carpet and only had to replace the extra thick padding that got wet, i lost the DVD shelf but i was planning on replacing it anyways. and we did not end up having to file with the insurance (thank god) The condenser pump got clogged and over flowed slowly all week before we found it. all is cleaned up but we are still waiting to replace the trim that damaged. but the carpet is back down and we have been using the room again. 

If i had my choice i would have gone with a sub floor, but with the drop ceiling in the theater room i figured it was going to be make the ceiling to short if i put a sub floor in. plus the pipes from the air conditioner are run in the ceiling towards the back of the theater room, which made me cancel my plans of using a projector for the room, that's why we went with the 73 inch Mitsubishi DLP instead. I already told my wife our next house i will have a "100% built from the ground up to my specs the way I want dedicated theater room". LOL


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## Blaze98 (May 4, 2014)

The mess is all cleaned up now, Carpet and padding was replaced. I am still moving things around in the room room and trying to figure out where I really want the AV equipment located at in the room, right now it is all in the closet on a metal rack. 

I still plan on upgrading the surround speakers and adding more posters and theater decor to the room. I also want to build stage and a stand for the TV to sit on instead of a coffee table like it is now. 
this is one of the latest pictures I have of the room now. I am going to get everything organized and post some good pictures with good lighting.


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## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

What a transformation. Mold is scary in any situation, and especially when you have kids in the house. I'm glad you got it all taken care of. Sorry to see that you sustained more water damage in the new room, but things look great now. And I love the pics of the little one staring at the TV. Too cute.


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