[rob j]

Hi all

After many months of research (mainly done in these forums )Three weeks ago I finally started work on converting my garage into a home theatre.

Initially it was planned to do a set up in our loft space, but that plan came to an end as too much work would have had to have been carried out remove a chimney breast and keep the building structurally sound.

The knowledge of the members of these forums in all aspects has been a huge help – Thanks guys! especially where sound proofing was concerned let alone views on HC equipment

Having had a passion for movies I jumped on the DVD band wagon about three years ago. Not soon after I was wanting the full HC setup, after a curious stroll into a Bose demo outlet and listening to a lifestyle system. Although I didn’t buy any of their products there and then (I was tempted though! ) I went back with the taste as to what could be achieved and surpassed.

So I set about it and here are some pictures to show you how I have got on so far:

The Garage

[rob j]

the dimensions of the garage are 174" X 103" X 94" high

However, behind the stud wall wll be a 2ft wide storage area, so the actual HC will be 150" X 103" X 94" high. The roof slopes slightly forward aswell, about 2" in all!

First thing we did was to construct a frame for the stud wall at the back which will double as the storage shelf/cabinet for all of the equipment

[rob j]

The struts went up - and were filled with 'Wickes Heavy Density Slabs', and were then plasterboarded over

The first ceiling board goes up. We filled the ceiling joists with 150mm Rockwool insulation, from Wickes

The left hand wall nearly finished

[rob j]

The left side wall with speaker cable fitted behind, as well as wiring for the wall up-lighters

Again, the rear wall cabinet/stud wall. This should give a better impression of what the equipment positioning will be like. All equipment will be on this shelf; Receiver, DVD player, projector and freeview box. For added effect, 2 LED downlighters are being placed in the roof of the cabinet to give a nice orange glow

Will post the rest tomorrow!

Thanks!

[ReTrO]

Looks to be going well.

Have you thought of putting any of your speakers into the walls or ceiling, or enclosures in the walls?

Make sure the false wall is very sturdy or you make get it resonating at low frequencies.

What are you planning on using for lighting control?

[rob j]

More pics as promised...

The channel for all the electrical wiring - lights and mains.

The front wall again - 'QED Bronze Special Edition' speaker cable running behind plasterboard. Speaker positioned for a 6ft wide screen

The sockets, for the lighting - will control wall lights, ceiling downloads and cabinet downlights

[rob j]

Originally Posted by ReTrO

Looks to be going well.

Have you thought of putting any of your speakers into the walls or ceiling, or enclosures in the walls?

Make sure the false wall is very sturdy or you make get it resonating at low frequencies.

Thanks Retro!

For the speakers, I've got a set of brand new Kef KHT2005.2 eggs and 2010 Sub that are still in their boxes from being bought 2 months ago. Ideal for the space I've got to work with. I had thought about enclosing them in the walls, but then we'd have to bring the plasterboard further in from the brick wall to accomadate them flush-fitted. So they will be screwed to the wall instead.

Incedently the walls of the garage are composed of a layer of breeze-block and a layer of brick, and the floor is concrete.

The frame is very strong and rigid, and will be composed of a layer of plasterboard, two layers of High Density slabs, and a layer of MDF on the garage door side. All will be sealed with slicone.

Also, the garage door seals shut when closed, so heat is conserved, and sound loss will (hopefully) be minimal, especially as in front of this frame will be a bulky 3 seater leather reclining sofa.

Originally Posted by ReTrO

What are you planning on using for lighting control?

I ordered some remote controlled dimmable switched from TLC. We already have one in our house and works fine.

[ReTrO]

Sounds like a good job.

I use a chrome version of the twin dimmer in my bedroom, very good value it is too.

I've popped a link in the speakers forum for ideal speaker placement, might be worth a look.

[rob j]

The rear wall. The far right hand side will be a removable escape hatch.

One of four ceiling downlight, ordered from TLC

Rear wall cabinet, fitted with four double mains sockets, ordered from TLC. Finished yesterday after much trouble!

Cabinet downlights

[rob j]

Rear wall framing sealed yesterday

And that's where I'm upto on the pictures

Today we finished all the electrics and changed over the supply from the old wiring. I Finished painting the remaining bit of wall and painted ceiling the with emulsion, and filled the edges in the cabinet with paintable decorators caulk.

Tomorrow I will get the rear wall filled with the insulation slabs and plasterboard that, and then insulate and board up the area above the cabinet. Will also try and get the rest of the skirting done

Then the room construction will be done. Lovely

EDIT

Funnily enough I had drilled the holes for the speaker cable according to the information I gained from the dolby site! It was extremely useful and has good information on it

[KW1816]

The rear wall. The far right hand side will be a removable escape hatch.

After sitting through some of the DVD's my wife has chosen recently, I think an escape hatch should be added to to the list of requirements for any home cinema

[LDR]

Ive just tried fitting one of those remote dimmers from TLC, its the 600w load one, and I cant get it to work at all, Ive only got 2 25w bulbs connected at the mo as we are fitting the halogen spots tomorrow, I know the wiring is sound cos we can get the lights to work on/off when connecting the wires together, but nothing when connected to the dimmer switch. Is there a way to test the switch itself to see if its faulty or not ?

[johnscarlet]

Don't the switches have a minimum load , as well as a maximum one ?

[LDR]

Yep, 40w min, and Ive got 50w for now, and nothing..

[johnscarlet]

that was my best effort , sorry.

If its anyuse , B&Q do identical ones , you could pick up another one to check it out , then return it when you get a replacement from TLC.IIRC there were some issues with these switches a while back , the manufacturer were exellent at swapping them out , of course IIDRC they could have been hopeless

[LDR]

B&Q only do the 400w load though, that wont be enough for my needs..

[johnscarlet]

But if it works the 2 that are connected then you know its the tlc switch

[KW1816]

Are you using mains voltage (GU10) halogens or low voltage ones ?

If it's low voltage the transformers may not be compatable with the dimmer. Also remember that for low voltage the wattage of the lamps is not the figure you need - it's the transformer rating.

I've got a couple of the TLC dimmers and had no problems with them - have you got a diagram of your wiring ?

Hope this helps
Kevin.

[ReTrO]

All dimmable electronic transformers should work with the TLC dimmer as it claims to use Trailing Edge technology.

[theritz]

rob j,

Good thread, looking foward to seeing how it works out for you. - Small request.............. any chance you could reduce the size of the pictures a little - I'd say it's a fair haul for 56k'ers...................


Sean G.

[LDR]

Originally Posted by KW1816

Are you using mains voltage (GU10) halogens or low voltage ones ?

If it's low voltage the transformers may not be compatable with the dimmer. Also remember that for low voltage the wattage of the lamps is not the figure you need - it's the transformer rating.

I've got a couple of the TLC dimmers and had no problems with them - have you got a diagram of your wiring ?

Hope this helps
Kevin.

Im using GU10 lamps, and its sorted now, my sparky called back today and confirmed the switch was faulty, have had a replacement from my local TLC, and all is working fine now..off to program the pronto next.

Thanks for the replies though guys.

[rob j]

Originally Posted by theritz

rob j,

Good thread, looking foward to seeing how it works out for you. - Small request.............. any chance you could reduce the size of the pictures a little - I'd say it's a fair haul for 56k'ers...................


Sean G.

I think the size should be alright now, took me a while but got there

Yesterday (Monday) managed to get the lower rear wall done. I spent ages cutting the insulation slabs to get a perfect, tight fit between the struts . I put the centre and right front speaker cable through there too.

As you can see there is a layer of mdf, sealed on the inside ( due to be sealed on the garage door side soon) then two layers of slabs, with plasterboard over them. I also sealed the gap between the concrete floor and edge of the frame with slicone as well (bloody stinks and is a right pain to wash off if you get it on your hands )

After this we cut and screwed the skirting board to all but the left-hand wall before we finished plaster boarding the wiring channel at the edge ceiling, and finally finished filling any gaps in the plasterboard in the ceiling and the walls.

Then in the evening our spark (future brother in-law ) came to connect and fix up the four wall lights. Although style-wise they're not my cup of tea, these will do for now and were pretty cheap.

And with the light on

But all does not end great - the two orange colour LED bulbs in the cabinet downlight look really crap, and don't even fill the whole cabinet with light even when dark. To cure this, today (Tuesday) I picked up three more downlights from a local electrical shop today (not bad, £4 each with a free halogen bulb ) which I am gonna put in. I think I am going to get some blue bulbs this time - they just look cooler

Not only that, even when the dimmer is switched off, both bulbs still emit faintly. This doesn't happen however when you put in one halogen bulb and one LED bulb - both are then un-lit. So to try and find out the cause of the problem I put the two orange LED bulbs in the in the downlights in the kitchen, which has a regular light switch to operate them, to see how they faired then. Both LEDs switch complety off when the switch is off.

- Oh, and the cabinet dimmer keeps switching on and off without human interference, so it is probably the dimmer . I'll get the spark to look at it tomorrow to check if its the wiring. If its still not alright its going back

Oh well that was a busy day! Today I didn't get much done other than seal the two front corners of the room with silicone, and of course, pick up those three extra downlighters. Tomorrow I'm off out to get a paint colour sorted. Wonderful.

OK thats all for now folks

Cheers

A good electrician friend of mine had a problem with lights not working correctly. Sometimes they would just come on, or turn on and off in the middle of the night, at first we made fun of him and said he had ghosts (He just bought a 104 year old house), he had those wireless RF X10 switches EVERYwhere in his house, you can turn on the heated floor in his bathroom or the toaster with the bloody thing. Anyways, he eventually found out the light problem was caused by a noisy power supply in his computer, soooo if you have a pc wired in there somewhere, check it out

oh yeah, he replaced it with a more reputable brand name of power supply and everything was the cats ass

[rob j]

Well the remote dimmer for the cabinet has stopped playing up - haven't noticed any switching on or off intermittently after the last few days. However the twin remote dimmer seems to be getting extremely hot when it is switched on. Checked it was wired correctly, so could this be a duff dimmer?! Might just send them both back to TLC and get replacements.

Well the work rate has been on and off this week owing to other commitments and having to dash about, but have managed to order the carpet, and the receiver came yesterday All of the following work was done since last friday


Well made the hatch door out of plaster board and some timber. Will have two layers of slabs inside, than sealed mdf on the back. It fits plush

It was the painting that has took most of the time over the past week... and I bloody hate painting It would have been OK if the walls only need one coat, but because had to be mixed it'll take two or three coats before it looks decent. And then there is the inconvenience of having to go back and get even more mixed, plus the added expense - I wish I just had them papered now! But I will troup on

The ceiling on took one coat, and came out flawless. I think the clolour is Dulux Plush Velvet 1 - a very deep matt blue. The walls are done in Dulux Moraccan Velvet 1, again, matt finish.

Some with the room dimmed

Oh, we managed to put some coving up as well. It is painted with Tawny Crest 2, a dark beige colour, along with the skirting.

I installed the extra three downlights that I bought. They don't match the two from TLC, but look good as a result of the arrangement. The picture here doesn't do them justice

[rob j]

I finally got round to enclosing the area above the cabinet off. Would have been sooner, but a locking bracket on the roller that seals the garage door shut was broken and had to wait for the new part.

On the roof of the cabinet is two layers of 150mm rockwool, plus all the left over bits of insulation slabs. That was then enclosed off with plaster board to create the back of the stud wall.

A closer picture

And started insulating it, but then ran out of slabs. And so have Wickes for the time being

And lastly, my receiver arrived yesterday A silver Denon 2805 from the good chaps at AV-Land. £599 and was delivered next day I'm Just going to be waiting about another week before I can get it up and running

wow man its looks like its really coming together, looks great! Wish I coould do that to my garage, keep posting!

As for the Denon, you arent just gonna let that badboy sit around for a week are you?

Excellent work rob j,
It's great to see another car kicked out onto the drive so as to make use of that valuable hc space. Look forward to seeing it finished.
I take it your garage is internal. I wish mine was, I'm having to pay out for a porch to be built between the garage and house so I can get in there without getting wet!
hatcher

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/raymond...inema_room.htm

Cool! I'm planning same fo garage.

[rob j]

Cheers for the compliments guys

I was very tempted to hook it up to just one egg as I've only got the one spare speaker cable to hand! but I thought may as wait that bit longer and have the full effect! Hopefully, it will be in place in the garage on Monday or Tuesday. I'm just going to have to go to a Wickes further afield to get one last pack of insulation slabs to finish that wall above the cabinet off.

I gave the walls a second coat yesterday looks much beter, but is still going to need a third coat. It is still a bit patchy in places. I'm just about to go off and do that as I speak!

As for the light switches, some of my family have got some and they all get hot to some extend, so I think they'll be staying put for a while. Plus I really can't be bothered to send them back!

P.S. That's a great site you got there, hatcher!

[rob j]

I've got some more pictures guys!

I'm sorry I've not posted anything in the past three weeks, It's just been fairly hectic around here! and I've only just got the digital camera USB lead back that I lent to a mate a fortnight ago

As things stand at this moment in time, I've still not had the chance to test my amp and speakers out yet - shocking I know! This WILL happen by this Friday!

This delay has been due mainly to loads of little problems that happened to get in the way, with this project and other commitments! The main one was that the carpet we ordered came within one week of ordering, complete with a 1 cm-wide hole bang in the middle of it, so it went back the same day. Only this time it took an extra week and a half to for the shop to send a replacement - very annoying! But this eventually got fitted last Thursday

At the same time this was going on, the coving above the rear cabinet fell down and smashed into a few bits, so we had to go out, buy another piece, paint it again etc. And also the handles on the hatch have been a right pain in the a*se to do, as the damn thing just about weight half a ton!

So here are a few more snaps! enjoy!