June 14, 2009 in House, Theatre Room by kerry

Starting on our theatre room

When we were searching for our house I made sure our “want” checklist contained an unfinished basement so I could eventually build a theatre room. After getting our fence and 3rd bathroom complete we’re moving onto tackle the theatre room as our next project. We started out by doing what a lot of DYI’ers do; staring at walls. We eventually decided that we’d best put all of our ideas down on some sort of sketch, naturally I turned to google’s sketchup application and we eventually came up with these (note, we have no previous sketchup experience so these are pretty basic, click for larger image):

Our room dimensions should be 12.5×17 once we frame everything in.

Our checklist consists of:

• 100 inch screen
• Projector (I haven’t decided on a unit yet but I’ll begin searching for one this week. I’m trying to limit myself to a $1,000 budget for the projector).
• 5.1 surround sound setup (speakers are missing from the sketches but 1 in each corner and sub under screen). Still need to do some research and find a decent setup.
• Running all of the cabling through the walls to keep a clean appearance.
• Couch with ottoman (need to shop around for a couch that we can easily take apart to squeeze into our basement).
• Probably throw in a bean bag or two.
• Cabinets above couch to house all of the electronics (probably building our own or taking something from Ikea and building it in). Add some LED lights to the base of the cabinets for some extra lighting in the back of the room.
• Hardwood floor or carpet, we haven’t decided for sure.
• 4 recessed ceiling lights in sets of two with dimmers on each set.

Before pictures: