So back to the project, we now have a bare room, and a screen which I installed from the previous home in Milford. In fact, I took ALL of the home theater gear from the first man cave project in Milford, which I posted earlier. This was certainly helpful to not have to re-spend those dollars. When we sold the first home, it was amazing how everyone wanted the home theater, but nobody wanted to pay anything extra for the gear... They assumed it was like tag sale furniture, that you'd be willing to part with for free. I on the other hand thought that someone with a penchant for sports, movies, etc., would at least be willing to pay a little something extra for a fully decked out theater, but I should have known better, given the economic climate. So, moving out simply required a little more work to box up the old gear. The hard part was removing the old screen, as that was hidden behind some decorative poplar wood which required a major repair job after the surgery was done. Thankfully, the new room in the Trumbull home would accommodate the screen, as well as the speakers and other equipment.
So here are the first pictures of the room, which is pretty bare at this point:
I don't think I have any pictures of the speakers installed here at this point, but that was my next step. I installed the Amps, and gear in the rack, and hooked up the speakers to the wires which I had already placed in the walls. The front speakers were held on a really nice wire cable shelf, with half-inch thick glass as a support. We didn't have any seating yet, since we were really low on cash didn't want to spend money on anything for a while after the move. But, the kids didn't really mind watching a few movies on pillows in this spacious 40 foot long room.
After about a month, I had my office setup in the back room, which was fantastic for doing homework by the fireplace, and I was really starting to dig having my office in a nice quiet part of the house. As we started to regroup, and think about how we might want to have others come over to watch movies, (as well as get ourselves off the pillows on the floor), we started to contemplate seating. I decided that I had a real opportunity here to one-up the last man cave by getting some real home theater seating. This would work out nicely, and I could purchase the seats one row at a time to save on costs. As I do with a lot of things, I went through an intense research process to see what was the best value in home theater seating, and I ultimately settled on the Berkline 2006 models which I purchased from Ultimate Home Entertainment. Roman was absolutely terrific in answering probably hundreds of questions that I had about various types of chairs, even those offered by other companies than those he carried. There were cheaper chairs to be purchased on Ebay and other websites, but ultimately I realized I had become loyal to Roman who I know would support me on any future issues that might arise, and I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for their home theater seating needs.
I forgot to mention that during my research, I became aware of an interesting 'option' that you can get with home theater chairs.. ButtKickers... I knew what they were, as I've been an avid home theater and car audio enthusiast for many hears, but I had figured that the idea of having a transducer attached to your chair, was nothing more than a gimmick. However, upon further research, I realized this was something that I simply must have if I was going to get real seats.. The idea is that sound and visuals aren't enough to trully get the best experience in watching films... You want to appeal to as many sensory inputs as possible to have the best experience. Imagine yourself watching the chase scene in "Gone in 60 Seconds", in a typical theater, you hear the gun-shots, but the sound coming from the speakers, no matter how powerful the sub-woofer(s), will really capture that like a transducer. With a ButtKicker, you don't just hear the gunshot, you feel like you were shot. Moreover, It's apparently recommended that those with heart conditions avoid using these. Okay, now I'm hooked. I may not be able to afford to put these in all the seats, but I was definitely going to put them in at least some...
So much for my lack of verbosity here...
Anyway, Through my many conversations with Roman, he presented me with a very serious dilemma.... He said the room wasn't going to really work with the open space I had initially planned. I didn't believe him at first, my last home had a sort of 'J' shape to it, and the sound was fine. But I did agree, that ultimately it was sort of awkward spatially having a cool home theater on one end of the room, and an office/study on the other end. He suggested I build a wall to separate the rooms. The way he said it, made it seem like it would be easy as pie, almost like there was no afterthought regarding the cost, time difficulty, etc. He also started talking crazy about adding stadium seating, which I thought would be really cool, but didn't think I needed at that time. I tried very hard to ignore his advice, but ultimately I knew he was right on several levels. Not the least of which was sound. I knew if I wanted to be watching the next 'Transformers' down there late at night, that I was going to need to do something about sound, less my wife Mary be very cross with me, pounding the floor with her foot hanging over the bed 2 flights up.. So I began to research what it would take to actually build a wall down there, bisecting the space in two. I kept wishing I wasn't having this problem, that I had only forseen this earlier when the builders were still there. I did speak to the builder about it, who at first tried to talk me out of it for a host of good reasons, but he saw I was pretty committed to the project.
The thing that helped push this forward was a neat product I found called EliminatorTrack. This product actually made it really easy to get the studs going, and begin the construction on this little 'Day #2' project in the home after we moved in. I began doing the installation myself after work, (and after class) and pretty soon had some semblance of a rough wall going up:
I knew to do this right, I'd need to insulate this wall very well, so I added a barrier of TorchSmooth, which is a heavy black roofing material without the little crumbs. John and I used regular 90lb roofing material in the last house, and boy was that a mess to deal with! I must have had little granules in my hair for a week. The TorchSmooth product is the way to go, and saves hundreds over other sound barrier type materials. You can see it going up on the picture below, under the sheetrock:
Here's a view from inside the room:
At this point, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, I had a dedicated room, and I knew the sound isolation and quality were going to be vastly improved. However, I now had to start thinking about the riser design. Since I was fully committed to this wall, I was definitely going to go all the way with the dedicated theater room idea. Building a riser wasn't the only consideration. With staged seating, you need lights for the steps, unless you want your guests faceplanting in the middle of a movie if they have to use the restroom. I also had to think about providing power to these chairs, since they were going to be powered recliners. My simple plan of an open space theater design was turning into quite an involved project.
As I started to work out the design, I also began to realize the number of chairs I was ultimately going to be able to fit in the room. I figured I could get exactly 11 chairs, using the design I put together below, using the specs from the exact chair that I had picked out for the room:
Next post: Riser construction
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