Home Theater.. The History

Okay, so here we go on the HT chronicle.  I suppose that I really need to frame this story with some background. We just moved to a house in Trumbull Ct, which was brand new. I mean, literally, when we bought the home, there was an empty lot with a home yet-to-be-built in it's place. How cool was it opportunity to basically build a house from scratch? well very, but it did come with it's share of headaches.  For example, we had to vacate our prior home, and rent for about 5 months while this thing was being built. Moving twice in the same year, when you have two young kids, and are going to night school is a real exercise in both physical and mental fortitude. However, I digress..   In our last home, we lived there for about 10 years, and never finished the basement. Mostly because we had no money, but eventually we figured out how to fund the project, and a core element (for me) was to build a proper 'man cave'.  Long story short, my buddy John Bianchi, generously helped me with all aspects of the build-out, and a few months later, we wound up with what was a really cool home theater, that probably was way cooler than what the overall house deserved for a little starter home down by the beaches of Milford Ct.   Here is a link to a flickr album of the first theater we built:

This really was a lot of fun to build.  The irony was that as soon as we completed this project, after 10 years of living there, my wife Mary started hinting that she was tired of living in Milford. Now I really don't think words can describe my feelings at that moment, other than to say that I was contemplating if I had to choose between my wife and the man cave, ... lets just say it took a big toll on the ol' grand scheme of life choices that we all have to make at one time or another. . Thankfully we did get to enjoy the theater from about 2005 till 2008, so I can't really say that I didn't get to enjoy the fruit of my buddy and my efforts for a good long time, as we all did as a family, particularly after we had a couple of kids. 

So the time eventually came to move on from the starter home, as the little house was bursting at the seams after our 2nd little one came along.   As with any decision to move, I had a couple of proviso's, a few quid-pro-quo's if you will, to seal the deal on a re-location:  1.) I need space for a NEW mancave. and 2.), I need to have property to ride the trials bike above.  I didn't care about anything else. Well, I did, but they were far lower on the totem pole as far as I was concerned.  Mary wanted an office, a lot of light, and a few other wifey things like a nice kitchen, jacuzzi tub, etc.  With the chance to build a new home, we literally were aforded the chance to have it all. (I did however have to truck in some big boulders for riding, as the yard was pretty flat...).   Next post:  The New Beginning