Last summer my husband and I decided to design and build a theater in our house. (Hey, two engineers with too much time on their hands can be dangerous!)
Here are some pics and an explanation of what we did in case any DIYers want to give it a go. Total cost of the project, including all electronics: about $2600
This is the screen. It is 100" wide (on the diagonal) and is made of MDF. If you're building a theater, I suggest skipping buying a true screen. They are way too expensive and this works just as well, plus our cats can't damage it because it's wood. Just have some friends around to help lift it because it is super heavy. Anyway, we took a sheet of MDF, sanded and painted it with "Quietude" from Lowes, then put a pearl finish on it. The black frame was made of scrap I had lying around the shop and painted flat black.
Total cost of the screen: ~$50
Riser seating! We built a platform out of 2 x 6 and plywood, then covered it with carpet. The carpet was a remenant we found at a cheap-o carpet place. It matched our installed carpet pretty darn close.
Total cost of riser: ~$80
Sound panels for the walls. My husband works with an acoustic engineer who came over and the two of them played around with the sound. At his suggestion, we built seven of these. The frames are 1 x 4 scrap I had in the shop. The backs are those panel boards with the holes in them that Lowes sells for people to make tool racks out of. The filling is cotton stuffing we bought on a roll from a fabric supplier. The covering is just a loose knit fabric I bought at Wal-Mart
Cost for 7 of them: $150
Ceiling grid for acoustics and lights. The grid is more 1 x 4 scrap and 2 boards I had to buy to frame it. The lighting is track. We bought that at Home Depot.
Lights, track and dimmer: (there are three more not pictured) $300
Rear sound panels. We made those out of whatever we had in the shop. They kind of look like abstract art. The little shelves for my figurines I bought at Wal-Mart for about $10 each.
Blackout curtains. I had to order these from JC Penney because my windows are so big the standard wouldn't work. I also ordered two extra panels that we hung on opposite sides of the screen to give the look of a real theater. These buggers were expensive, but necessary...
Curtains: $400 (for 4)
The electronics in the system are:
*BluRay Player
*4 ceiling speakers (they are kind of hidden behind the ceiling grid)
*3 front wall speakers
*Subwoofer
*Projector
*Receiver
*Xbox 360
*PS3 (doesn't always stay up there...we usually keep that downstairs unless we want to play on the screen)
We spent the money on the electronics instead of the construction. We had the game systems, so they aren't figured in the total price. The BluRay player was $200 and the Projector with the ceiling mount was about $800. I can't really remember how much he bought the speakers for because his acoustic engineer friend found them at some kind of sound-geek-swap-meet-thing. But they are some nice speakers!
So yeah, there ya go. Might not be "art" in the traditional sense of the word, but designing and building it took about two months, dozens of sketches and a bunch of sawdust.
