Lunar Threads

I know there are some electronics geeks around here so I figured I'd share this...

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.

The real question is: so when are you gonna invite us over? KF

looks like a great setup, wish i could get one like that at my place. I'm just curious what cable are you running to the receiver toslink or hdmi, because The ps3 only supports 7.1 through hdmi even though toslink has more bandwidth.

@Kizyr: Any time you want to come over, you're more than welcome to!

@exigence: We're running HDMI

Karthur wrote:(Hey, two engineers with too much time on their hands can be dangerous!)

There is nothing more terrifying than bored engineers. But at least you guys didn't blow anything up...this time.

Wow, I had no idea that you were an engineer! Anyway, this is an awesome project! Someday I hope to have a home theater, but if things work out the way I fantasize, I'll just have an IMAX theater connected to my house. =O

What room did you install this in?

An engineer huh?



So when can we expect those?

I'm not surprised you're an engineer, but I don't remember it being mentioned before here. I do remember you were teaching something mathy/sciency. Are you still doing that?

@Alunissage: Yes, I teach pre-engineering to high school kids. I love my job!

@Ardent Fox: Umm...I'll see what I can work up? XD

@phyco: The house came with a "media room" which meant it just had the necessary wiring above for speakers and a slightly vaulted ceiling. So that's where we built it.

@Vyse: We haven't blown stuff up since Fourth of July 08. We got the brilliant idea (with a few neighbors) to build a radio controlled flotilla to set fireworks off of on the lake. It was awesome, and we outfitted it with electronic detonators, set the show to music, the whole nine yards. Disney would be proud! Err...one of the neighbors even went down to Mexico and bought some SERIOUS fireworks. All was great until the cops showed up and gave us a noise ticket. They said it was an awesome show but still wrote us a ticket for $300. And a noise ticket in the boondocks is really, really lame. Who were we bothering? The cows?

^Now that is weird. My mother also lives in the boonies, outside of city limits, but thankfully there are no county-wide noise ordinances. It was nice when I was a teenager and could be as loud as I wanted.

That is a sweet, sweet setup. I like that a lot of the additions (the sound panels especially) are functional, but they still look really good for the space. I also like the idea of a screen; I use a projector sometimes when my roommate screens movies, but we have a white wall to put it on. If I move somewhere that I want to paint the wall, I'll have to remember how you did it.

How is the screen fastened to the wall? You mention it's heavy, so I'm wondering if it's just hung on nails, or something else?

@Sonic:
Thanks!
I don't have any photos of it, but the way we mounted the screen was a little complicated because of its weight, the fact that it had to be level, and we didn't want it to warp. I cut some shallow grooves in the back of the frame (using a dado blade) and then we mounted wooden tracks on the wall. I made these from scrap by planing down some pieces and then ripping them to the right width to fit in the grooves. Then, we slid it onto the tracks which were designed to keep it as flush as possible against the wall. Then, we screwed it onto the wall through the frame in a few spots where it landed on studs. We pre-drilled and used countersinks to make this process easier, too. Finally, we filled the holes in the frame with wood filler and touched it up with paint so you can't see those.

@Vyse:
Yeah, I know. Apparently it's a county-wide ordinance even though we're in the un-incorporated part of it.

Ardent Fox wrote:An engineer huh?



So when can we expect those?

I've seen the Gatling gun computer before, but I'm not gonna build it unless I can fire some CPUs out of it.

Karthur wrote: @Vyse: We haven't blown stuff up since Fourth of July 08. We got the brilliant idea (with a few neighbors) to build a radio controlled flotilla to set fireworks off of on the lake. It was awesome, and we outfitted it with electronic detonators, set the show to music, the whole nine yards.

Nice, a house with a media room already designed into it. I like that, planning ahead, haha. Anyway, if you did that with fireworks, check this out: http://www.ausbg.org/battle_fleet.html

I've always wanted to take that Idea, build a few submarines, and also do this: http://gizmodo.com/5311333/video-of-wea ... -fireworks and go all pearl harbor on their little battles, haha.

Karthur wrote:Anyway, we took a sheet of MDF, sanded and painted it with "Quietude" from Lowes, then put a pearl finish on it.

Not sure what all this means, but I wish I did... cause at my place we just project on the wall, and the paint seems to effect the color. ^_^ I see there is much here that I can learn.

MDF is a type of manufactured wood (like plywood). It's smooth and very heavy. Quietude is just the paint color we used. And the pearl finish is that stuff they sell in little bottles for people to 'faux finish' walls with. You just paint it on top of the base coat (Quietude) and it gives it a sheen that makes it look like a real screen