# My 1st HT Room Build



## John Wilson

This is my 1st attempt at a HT room. I've been lurking here for a few months now and have learned a good bit. This room was a bonus room that was used mostly for storage. From wall to wall it's 151" wide x 191" long. There's a small alcove that adds 28" to the screen wall for a total of 179" wide. The alcove is 58" long. I installed a counter top in the alcove and will place the a/v equipment underneath along with a small refrigerator. The riser is a 2 tier deal with 6" for the 1st row and the 2nd row 10" above the 1st row. Dimmable rope lighting along all the riser lips/edges. There will be 4 decorative columns with a lighting sconse in each column. The front and rear sconses are on seperate dimmers.

Equipment: 
Epson 8700 & 106" screen from Visual Apex
Onkyo TX-NR808
LG-blu ray
Speakers are all Dayton in-wall units from Parts Express along with a Dayton 12" RS1200K

Seats are Berkline 13175's from Roman @ Ultimate Home Entertainment.

Carpet is #1666-burgundy "Admit One" from Joy Carpets. 

Hopefully will have it wrapped up in 4 weeks or so and will post pics of the finished room.


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## robbo266317

I look forward to watching your room "grow"

Cheers,
Bill


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## TypeA

Keep us updated


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## FinanceBuzz

Looking good! Wish I had a bonus room like that to build out but I am making do with what I have by converting a spare bedroom.


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## Jasonpctech

Nice. Seems like a awesome "bang for your buck build" with a real theater look. I'm thinking that's the way I would have done it with a spare room and no existing big box speakers. I bet the quality of the surround will be great the way you have it layed out. Personally I didn't do such a great job by going brute force in a room that makes my system underwhelming but someday I might have a dedicated room too. This is close to what I want.:T


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## John Wilson

Getting closer. The projector and screen are mounted and have the "crowns" for the columns finished. Just waiting on the carpet and need to finish the column bases, baseplate trim, wall accents, and hang the poster frame. 

I hooked up the receiver and dvd player and got the projector settings in the ball park. We watched a movie the other night and I have to say going with the projector vs plasma-tv was the right choice for me. 




The carpet I'm waiting on:


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## Jasonpctech

Looks great.:T


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## John Wilson

Thanks! I'm real happy with how it's turning out. Even better is it's coming in under budget. :bigsmile:


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## John Wilson

The projector and smoke alarm look like a couple of big bugars hanging from the ceiling.......but oh well. Sure would be nice if Epson made that projector in something other than white. 



Aside from finishing up the baseboard trim and wall accents, I'm still waiting on the carpet. Supposed to be here by the end of next week. Once I get that installed I can setup the chairs and my wife can finally have her garage bay back. LOL. 



Oh yeah, building these columns myself turned out to be a major challenge. I did save about $1000 doing all 4 myself, but........lots of time in them.


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## RedZone

WoW! That room is going to be real inviting...I would love to have that kind of space.I have done a living room como.I love the red it really pops!.


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## John Wilson

Well, it's almost done. Just have some small details to wrap-up. I'm waiting on some custom curtains to be made from the red material to go over the window/blind and also under the counter to conceal the equipment. The carpet I have ordered for the room keeps getting back-ordered. I needed to have it ready for this weekend for a birthday party so I ran down to Lowe's and got some cheapo carpet to install while we wait on the other. Turns out this stuff looks dandy! Coulda saved some $$$ if I didn't have tunnel vision for the other stuff. I do have a new found respect for folks that lay carpet for a living. That stuff wore me out!! :help:


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## Jasonpctech

That's nice. Great theater look, and a good example of what you can have without 20 grand worth of room. Would be happy to have the same setup I might add some of those printed fabric bass traps with movie posters. did you find a unified remote yet?


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## robbo266317

The pictures show that the effort you have put in has certainly paid off. I bet you are proud of what you have achieved. :T


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## John Wilson

Jasonpctech said:


> That's nice. Great theater look, and a good example of what you can have without 20 grand worth of room. Would be happy to have the same setup I might add some of those printed fabric bass traps with movie posters. did you find a unified remote yet?


Thanks! No, not a $20k room, but that would certainly be easy to spend with higher level equipment. As it stands, I have a freckl over 13K in the room including both sets of carpet, but not including ~$500 worth of tools I bought (table saw, staple gun, carpet tools) to complete the job, and the blu-ray player I already owned. No unified remote yet. Just a litter of seperate remotes right now. :gulp:



robbo266317 said:


> The pictures show that the effort you have put in has certainly paid off. I bet you are proud of what you have achieved. :T


Thanks! I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. :T


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## AOR

John Wilson said:


> The projector and smoke alarm look like a couple of big bugars hanging from the ceiling.......but oh well. Sure would be nice if Epson made that projector in something other than white.
> 
> 
> 
> You can use vinyl decal, similar to "car wraps" to wrap your projector in. Cut all of the vents & pertinent areas out & it will still stay cool. Before WII came in other colors besides white; that's what I did.
> 
> The theatre looks great BTW


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## MrACE

This loooks amazing,, love what u did with columns,,,lol.. i wanted to do the same thing but becuase of budget and wanted to keep it as cheap as possible, i got FOAM column ,, had my friend made it for me and then wrap them with wall paper,, they look alright but yours just tooo good.
website charge $200 for each column ,, good to do it yourself and save h eell lot of money


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## Zeitgeist

I love the red/black theme - but do you have any problems with the red being too bright? Just curious - I have a feeling that the red doesn't stand out as much in reality.


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## John Wilson

AOR said:


> You can use vinyl decal, similar to "car wraps" to wrap your projector in. Cut all of the vents & pertinent areas out & it will still stay cool. Before WII came in other colors besides white; that's what I did.
> 
> The theatre looks great BTW


Thanks! Good idea! Hadn't thought about that. 



MrACE said:


> This loooks amazing,, love what u did with columns,,,lol.. i wanted to do the same thing but becuase of budget and wanted to keep it as cheap as possible, i got FOAM column ,, had my friend made it for me and then wrap them with wall paper,, they look alright but yours just tooo good.
> website charge $200 for each column ,, good to do it yourself and save h eell lot of money


Thanks! 



Zeitgeist said:


> I love the red/black theme - but do you have any problems with the red being too bright? Just curious - I have a feeling that the red doesn't stand out as much in reality.


The red helps break-up all the black. The material is a faux seude and is not really reflective, so it doesn't distract from the screen while watching. Even with all 4 sconses turned all the way up, the room lighting is still soft/warm. My only regret was opting for LED lights in the poster frame......those are *bright*! I don't even turn it on now. May replace those with incandescents on a dimmer..............someday. The poster frame was one of my "splurge" items and I bought it from 4seating.com. I got a lot of ideas from the graphic renderings on their website. 

As far as the black/red color scheme, I wanted something that would stand-out, yet would be functional/optimal for viewing movies (non reflective). Just so happens red and black are my favorite colors. If the room were open to other areas of the house (ie, living room, kitchen, etc...) I would have gone with colors that blended in with the rest of the house.


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## MrACE

how much that red fabric cost ya,, and did you use lumber to make the columns?


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## John Wilson

The fabric was $12/yd. The columns are framed with ripped OMB and paneled with some cheapo 5mm panel. Same materials used for the upper and lower crowns. The black accent on the crowns is 2x2.


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## handroud

i love the columns, did you make them or ordered them?


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## Diskohouse

You made a really nice theater!!! What speakers did you end up choosing for it? Are you running a 5.1 or a 7.1 system? Are you going to install some acoustic panels? How big is the theater?


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## John Wilson

handroud said:


> i love the columns, did you make them or ordered them?


Thanks! I made them. 



Diskohouse said:


> You made a really nice theater!!! What speakers did you end up choosing for it? Are you running a 5.1 or a 7.1 system? Are you going to install some acoustic panels? How big is the theater?


Thanks! All the speakers (in-walls & subwoofer) are Dayton units from Parts Express. Probably won't install any acoustic panels. It already sounds plenty good by my standards. The room is roughly 12.5ft x 16ft not including the small alcove where the equipment and popcorn machine are located. It is a 7.1 setup.


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## mechman

Nice room John! :T


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## ALMFamily

Great room John - very nice work! I love those columns! :T


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## John Wilson

Well, as I continue on with my HT room education, I think I've found a solution to one of my self perceived mistakes..........LED lights in my poster frame. I'm sure some of you more experienced folks will think "duh", but it took me a bit of off & on research/interest to figure out my LED lights were indeed 12VDC that could indeed be dimmed. So, tonight I installed a $10 PWM dimmer and it works fantastic. I can actually watch a movie with the sign on (dimmed ever so slightly). It's hard to appreciate in the photo, but I can say that my cell phone gives off at least double the light the poster frame does. Nice!!!


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## TypeA

Slick, very slick.


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## bawward

That poster box/frame... incredible. Don't know why I haven't considered that before. 

Also, I do like the overall feel of the room, very inviting! Question - How far away from the screen are your seats?


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## MeatHanky

That's a great little theater! Love the black and red theme.... Where is the "admit one" carpet though? On the columns?


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## John Wilson

bawward said:


> That poster box/frame... incredible. Don't know why I haven't considered that before.
> 
> Also, I do like the overall feel of the room, very inviting! Question - How far away from the screen are your seats?


Screen to head for front row is ~9.5ft and ~15ft for second row. 



MeatHanky said:


> That's a great little theater! Love the black and red theme.... Where is the "admit one" carpet though? On the columns?


The short story?? It took a while to get and I needed to have the room ready for a birthday party. So, I ran down to Lowes and picked out some carpet I thought would look decent. It's still in the room. The "admit one" carpet showed up the week following the party. It's sitting in storage. I'll install it at some point.


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