[cloudcity]

I am very new to this, and if you've read any of my other threads you'll know I have had (and still have) lots of questions as well as good ideas.

Planning began a few weeks ago, with me searching the net looking for help hints and ideas. I didn't know about this place so I didn't have much luck. I live in a part of the country that feels pretty cut off a lot of the time, I even discovered there are no installers or specialists south of Bristol.


Here are a fe pics of parts of the living room before it all began.

You may say there's not a lot wrong with it but having a 43" plasma screen in a corner looked ridiculous to me and I hated seeing all the cables. It couldn't go on the other side of the room because I had a 200 litre aquarium already there. But that was sold last week and collected so was able to begin.

[cloudcity]

Preparation was yesterday (Sat 27th Jan 07). Clearing out the living room and marking where everything is going.

[cloudcity]

Today is Sunday 28th January 2007 and it was Day One of Six.

My boss was supposed to be here at 9am so I could borrow his SDS drill, but he didn't arrive until 11am so it began with a little delay. Then my father (the electrician) and I began channeling out the walls for the cabels.

[cloudcity]

Tomorrow is day two of six. The plan of action is to strip the room down.

Removal of that god-awful artex stuff off the ceiling, that swirling pattern and the poor workmanship is really distracting. Then all the wall paper comes off, the remaining cable will be placed in conduit and all the channeling from today fill in.

As well as this the skirting will be rubbed down as the speaker cable will run along the bottom before beading is attached over it.

Day three is preparation and covering of the walls and ceiling, rubbing down the filler etc;

Day four is pure brilliant white matt on the ceiling and charming old magnolia for the walls. During all this the bracket should arrive and be attached to the wall just above the trunking.

Day five should be construction of the dvd cabinet. At last count I had just over 360 dvds which stood on a self made bookcase that cost £10 and took an hour to make - cabinets or bookshelves big enough cost hundreds! The new cabinet will appear to be sunk into the wall.

Day six should be mounting of the screen and assembly of the audio video unit as well as finding the right spot for the rest of the speakers.


It's only a 12' by 12' foot room, and there's me and a very experienced decorator who's doing a lot of the work quite cheaply as a family favour.

Wanna see how it goes? Then keep checking back here daily.

[cloudcity]

In case it helps, I'll explain a few problems too. Hopefully some body reading this will learn from my mistakes.


As well as a short delay in the SDS drill arriving, I was given the impression it came with a channeling chisel. It didn't. All we had was a standard one inch chisel and a pointed end too. The walls were breeze block and all the channeling took about 3.5 hours in total. Would have been quicker if we had the correct bit but was 100 quicker than doing it by hand.

I'd advise doing this task in pairs as getting the chissel into some awkward spots can be a little physically draining. Patience and strong arms!

Keep the room ventilated and make sure everything is out of the room before begining. We hadn't cleared the (black leather) sofa out before I started and it took my wife two hours to clean it afterwards.

Googles and a mask are advisable and ear plugs are a must. We told our neighbour what we were doing first as the noise on the other side of the wall was just as bad - probably ruined his Sunday poor chap.

[pixelpixel]

Your one brave man, looks good so far.

[Dr Force]

looking good fella

[cloudcity]

Thanks for that guys, I'm gonna keep at it.

[Pioneer Dude]

Good work!

[pixelpixel]

I have always wanted to do this but how do you future proof the cables ? Do you allow for every cable and can cables be replaced ?

What have you done cloudcity ?

[Dankeech]

Hi Cloudcity,
Glad you've started a build thread! Keen to see how this all pans out. Make sure your conduits are large enough or easy to get to for future upgrades for when the expensive upgraditis sets in. Very few people here have't suffered from it before, and unlike measles you tend to get it more than once.

Any thoughts to colour scheme? Also would love to see a little diagram of your plans so get a better idea what's going where.

Dan.

[MarkP80]

Cloudcity, looking good so far

Keep us posted. I'm impressed with your six day programme - I think I'm staring down the face of nearer six months!

Cheers,
MarkP

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by pixelpixel

I have always wanted to do this but how do you future proof the cables ? Do you allow for every cable and can cables be replaced ?

What have you done cloudcity ?

In the conduit that goes down from the screen to the floor I have installed:


Power cable (3 straight pin kettle-style connection)
DVI cable (that current screen requires)
Gold HDMI cable (just in case)
Speaker wire x 2 (just in case)
Not enough room left for any more!


We could only make the channel 2" deep as any further and we would have gone through to next door's wall. If I have missed out any cables (and in years to come I'll probably find I have) I will have to live with it.


I'll also be purchasing an HDMI 4 port switcher/splitter to help with possible problems. For example I need a DVD recorder and if I can connect via HDMI it'd be a bonus.

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by MarkP80

Cloudcity, looking good so far

Keep us posted. I'm impressed with your six day programme - I think I'm staring down the face of nearer six months!

Thanks.

The six day plan is in place because this Friday we have guests staying over. So work has to be completed by then. After that, it's another 10 week wait for the new sofa to arrive.

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by Dankeech

Any thoughts to colour scheme? Also would love to see a little diagram of your plans so get a better idea what's going where.

Dan.

Unfortunately we have ended up going with magnolia., and that's after days of ponderings and painting. If it doesn't work after a while we can change that easily ourselves.

Plus, we always watch tv with the lights off so it shouldn't bother too much.

[cloudcity]

Today was Day Two.

Nothing exciting really, just stripping off the artex from the ceiling and removing all the wallpaper.

The using indoor filler we covered up and filled in plasterboard ceiling as it was done very badly when the house was built. (House is only 15 years btw)

Cables were placed in conduit and sunk into the channels safely. Began to fill in over them, with most of the gaps filled today - wait for it all to dry/set and finish them off tomorrow with a second load of indoor filler.

[cloudcity]

You can see from the pics the work at this stage.

The previous occupants of our house made a real mess of the walls, honce why we papered after we moved in here. So now we've stripped everything off we rub the walls down and then add a layer of finish on them.

That's tomorrow's work hopefully, as well as placing lining paper on the ceiling and walls. Painting is scheduled for the next day.

You'll see in the pics that we have had to use a wall paper steamer so we covered all the sockets and exposed electrical outlest first.

[cloudcity]

Due to the huge amount of work involved, we haven't removed the current plasma set up.

1. we have no spare room in the house where we could safely place it all while we work in the lounge.

2. we have Sky HD in the loung and Sky Plus upstairs. This means if you disconnect the main Sky box they start ringing you up, or worse you get nasty letters from them claiming you are "in breach of contract". This can work out expensive as they do not listen to reason.

3. not disconnecting and removing everything until the new AV unit is built and ready to go should save me a lot of time and last minute hastle.


So what we have done is covered everything in towls, dust sheets and bed sheets. Taping as much as possible around the bottom. This means we have to be careful and constantly stepping around it but I'm counting on this paying off when it comes to final set up.

[Kenny Glasgow]

CC

Keep up the good work

If you're still looking for a 4 way HDMI box I can recommend the Octava

http://www.tmfsolutions.co.uk/homeci...a_HDS4A-UK.htm

It handles digital audio as well

[richard plumb]

looking good - you're a braver man than me, although the prices I've been quoted mean I might have a go - look out for me on a future edition of DIY SOS!


How have you removed the artex? I'd like to do that but its hundreds of pounds to get it skimmed.

[gazzerdaman]

Steam stripper - watch out when stripping artex, depending on the age it may contain asbestos fibres.

[SpencerUp]

Looks very good, I would be very interested to know where you got those pictures from? In the first page, you posted a few pics of the current layout and also a picture of a load of print outs you did of furniture and tvs etc. Where did you get these from?

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by Kenny Glasgow

CC

Keep up the good work

If you're still looking for a 4 way HDMI box I can recommend the Octava

http://www.tmfsolutions.co.uk/homeci...a_HDS4A-UK.htm

It handles digital audio as well

Thanks for that. It's a lot more than I intended to pay, but it's not urgent so I will bookmark it for later.

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by richard plumb

How have you removed the artex? I'd like to do that but its hundreds of pounds to get it skimmed.

We covered the floor in black plastic bags, and then using a steamer we scraped it off with a wallpaper scraper. It just falls off in lumps as it was only a few millimetres at it's thickest - much easier than I imagined.

Then you use filler for the uneven bits, then sand it all down before papering and painting. 1400 thickness lining paper and two coats of white matt emulsion.

It really helps having a decorator who's done it before helping.

Best of luck with yours.

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by gazzerdaman

Steam stripper - watch out when stripping artex, depending on the age it may contain asbestos fibres.

Luckily our home is only 15 years old which ruled that out.

[cloudcity]

Originally Posted by SpencerUp

Looks very good, I would be very interested to know where you got those pictures from? In the first page, you posted a few pics of the current layout and also a picture of a load of print outs you did of furniture and tvs etc. Where did you get these from?

Thanks.

My wife and I began searching the internet a month or so ago. Lots of searching using different search engines as well as eBay. If you know roughly what you are after, for example we were looking for a black leather corner safa, and you know what size/dimensions you require it narrows the search.

Save all relevant pics in the same folder and print when you have enough alternatives. For a little inspiartion we looked at what other people had done in their living rooms (we didn't know of this forum then, otherwise it would have been much quicker) that helped visualise the plan.

Measure the room accurately and use that to draw a layout of the room when empty. It helps if you can draw, especially in three dimensions.

[cloudcity]

Today was Day Three.

Didn't get as much done today as planned. That's because I had forgotten to channel out some wall for the surround speakers. So spent a bit of time this morning making that happen before sanding down the whole ceiling.

As well as doing that we had to use interior filler to smooth out the lumps bumps cracks and gaps in the walls. Then another marathon sanding down session this time for the walls as well as applying what felt like bucket loads of filler in the channels I'd made on day one.

Placed the cable for the screen in the trunking. But, I had much less room than I hoped for so only (just about) had room for the power cable, the two-ply dvi & paralell cable and the new (un-used) HDMI lead.

Left a nice gap at the top and bottom of the trunking where these leads protrude from to allow for movement and to finish them off neatly at another stage.


Big bonus of the day: I learnt to plaster for the first time. Much easier than I imagined and felt silly that I'd put off learning it for 33 years.

[Pioneer Dude]

Coming along nicely there.

[cloudcity]

D'oh!


Forgot the pics. Nothing exciting really, it should start taking shape pretty much at the last minute.

[cloudcity]

About the most exciting thing so far is that the bracket has arrived.


I didn't need an 'all singing all dancing' model, so plumped for an intimediate one. This one tilts about 15 degrees and swivels about 40 degrees also. We may never use those functions but it's nice to have them. And an absolute bargain at just under £40 too!