[Jasonjo]

Hi All,

After quite a few years debating the issue, a couple of months ago we finally decided to get on and convert our existing integral garage into a dining room and/or playroom.

Anyhow, as part of the Garage conversion we needed to knock a doorway through into the lounge as the main access route into the 'soon to be' Dining Room. As this was going to create quite a bit of mess and also needed a fair bit of fix-up with plastering, it seemed an ideal time to give the lounge an overhaul and get everything setup exactly as I have wanted for quite some time.

My main bugbear was having to use pipes to hide all the cables below the plasma - this was an ok compromise at the time, but I really wanted everything hidden as I am quite fussy like that!

I did think about doing something in the garage conversion with my AV setup, but this room is really for 'family time' away from the TV for playing/eating. "Away from the TV..." can't believe I just said that!!!

This thread will focus on the lounge element of the work, but if there is enough interest I could also add the pictures from the garage conversion, but this isn't really home cinema related. Let me know if I am wrong!

Anyhow, enough rambling and on with the pictures!!!

This is a picture of the exiting setup. It isn't quite up to date as I now have Sky and also changed the floor standers for some KEF wall mounted speakers. I can't believe I didn't take any pictures before I packed everything away

As part of the work, I also decided to downscale my setup a bit as I really don't get time to appreciate a full separates setup and very rarely get to drive the sound to it's full potential. Based upon this decision, the Denon AVC-A10SE and Denon DVD-3800 (which are both huge!) are going to be replaced with a single Arcam Solo Movie 5.1. I decided to keep my existing KEF speakers and also the DVDO iScan video processor as I couldn't live without this now. The Xbox has also been retired to the loft, soon to be replaced with a PS3, mainly to gain access to Blu-Ray releases. With my daughter, I hardly get time to watch movies, let alone play games!!!

Now would also have been an ideal time to swap out the plasma, but I bought this in the "good old days" when plasmas where 2-3k and doubt I would get very much for it now. With the cost of the garage work and other kit changes, I just couldn't justify this change at the moment and the PWD6 does a really good job when driven at 720P from my HD+. I have a universal bracket mounting, so I am pretty confident I could just lift off the old screen and replace with a new one - well, thats the theory!

Right, I am rambling again

Once the lounge was cleared and the wallpaper stripped, it all looked a bit rubbish.

We were thinking of getting the walls re-plastered as the chap would be in for the garage conversion, but after closer inspection, the walls were actually pretty good, I just needed to scrape off all the old paint. I say "just" it actually took me days and days...not the most existing job in the world, but I am sure it was worth it for a good finish

I managed to grab some old bloke off the street to help with the paint stripping...oh ok, it's my Dad helping me out as usual

My wife has hated the existing wallpaper for years, so it was a relief to get rid of it. We have always liked painted walls, but the existing walls looked awful when we first moved in and stripped the paper so decided to go with wallpaper as a short term measure, "short term" ended up being about 5 years. As we wanted plain painted walls, I knew that I would need to get the walls into a pretty good shape and also make a very good job of finishing any new plaster work after the cable channeling - the pressure was on!

We got bored of stripping old paint, so started with the wall channeling, not that this was much more interesting!

Once everything was channeled we used trunking to provide the conduit for all the necessary cabling. As can be seen from the picture (if you look closely) I had taken quite a bit of time to measure and draw out exactly where the plasma and speakers were going to be. This took me a few hours one night (anal me! ) but I knew it was really important to make sure everything was perfect for the final install. As you will see later, I am really, really glad I took the time to get this right, and it was definitely worth the preparation.

In addition to the cables for the plasma, I decided to move my rear speakers from the back wall to the top/back of the side wall. This was mainly needed as the door for the garage conversion was going to be exactly where my existing rear left speaker was! My existing rears were Mission 78DS's which I got to match my 782 fronts, but as these are now gone, I decided to change these for some discrete Anthony Gallo Micros which could be placed up high in the corners of the room, again for that "clean" look (you will notice a theme developing here ).

So, more channeling to do!

<to be continued...>

[Jasonjo]

Didn't realise there was a maximum number of images per post. So here we go with some more!

Once all the channeling was done, and I had decided on which cables to put in, it was time for the plastering. Now, I know from bitter experience that I wasn't that great at this, so I had pretty much decided to get a professional in for this. However, a quiet word with the chaps doing the garage conversion (plus some cakes/beer!) and they agreed to stay on one night and help me out!

This was the end result:

My wife has always wanted a fire in the lounge, but I have always resisted as we have GCH and I knew the ideal place for the fire was where the plasma and AV cabinet would go. We debated this for ages as I really didn't want to mount the screen above the fire, mainly due to the height implications, as the maximum distance we can sit from the screen is approx 11' and I didn't want to have to look up, even slightly. I considered a tilting bracket, but didn't want the screen to protrude from the wall anymore than the existing slimline wall mount.

Anyhow, we agreed on going for a modern electric fire which could be used as a "heat boost" when it was really cold and the GCH hadn't quite kicked in. Being electric, we have a lot more choice with placement.

We decided to place the fire on one of the side walls, near to the garage conversion opening so it could provide heat for both rooms if the door was open to the dining room. This is also sideways facing for the sofa, so you get a nice warm glow from the side whilst watching TV when the fire is in "effect only" mode

So with this decision made, it was time to do some more channeling to make sure that the pesky power cable would be hidden. For safety, I also decided to put in a Fused Connection Unit (FCU) so that I could switch the fire off at the wall, rather than rely on just the appliance switch. Again, note the drawings on the wall, just to get in right!

I left the power cable with the existing plug on to be able to test the fire. Once tested, I would then cut the cable and fix it directly into the FSU so no cable would be seen and I could isolate the fire at the flick of a switch.

We decided to go for a modern Dimplex fire, a Dimplex Obsidian one to be exact, here is a quick picture of the box (more pictures to follow once it is mounted).

The picture on the box shows the default log effect, but we will be changing this for the (supplied) white pebbles effect as we are not 60 just yet!

Right, time for a break...will post more later today

<to be continued>

[cusimar9]

Looking good mate, keep us updated

[rupees_al]

it's later today!!!! more pics and info please...

starter for ten.... where did you get the fire from?

looking good so far.

and how high is the panel gonna be up the wall... this is always a bone of an av install and its interesting to see what people settle on...

[Jasonjo]

More pictures coming soon, I promise...it takes ages to upload them to photobucket from home, wish I had my work 10MB/s link!

I was amazed as the fire retails for about £400-600, but I managed to get it from the Altlantic Shop for £259 which is more than 50% off RRP! I love the Internet More details here: http://www.theatlanticshop.co.uk/Cat...=20233531(Base)

We are actually really pleased with the fire and ended up being much better than I expected with a very nice flame affect and very stylish looking. I should be uploading some better pictures of it later in the thread and I also took a video of the flame effect...'cos i'm sad

The bottom of the panel is exactly 90cm (and I mean exactly ) from the floor, which I think is an ideal height for our sofa and leaves enough space for the centre speaker to be mounted at a good height too (you will see what I mean soon ). This puts eye height at between a third and half up the height of the screen.

Cheers

JJ

[Jasonjo]

Right, time for a bit more chat and some more pictures

Managed to get the walls in pretty good shape and the plastering is all finished now.

No real shots of it, but all the walls have now been painted with a white basecoat to hide any small imperfections and give the coloured coats a good foundation. We always use this stuff and it works very well.

The following shots show the final colours we have decided on. We have chosen to use two colours; a Dulux Mellow Mocha (on the left) on the long walls and Dulux Soft Truffle (on the right) on the end walls. The plan is for this to widen the room and make it look less "long and skinny". In hindsight, this has worked pretty well and full credit goes to my good lady wife for this bit

This is the colour going on properly, well, the Mellow Mocha one anyhow

Bit of a boring post this one...more exciting stuff to follow...

<to be continued>

[Jasonjo]

A quick shot of the plasma wall completely painted. Very pleased with the finish, looks like all my hard work paid off This was taken in the sunny mid-afternoon which makes the room look very tranquil.

A final shot of the colours where they join. Not a stark contrast, but enough to look different and add a little depth.

Oh, and here's a shot of some IT geek with a roller

Right, time to get the plasma on the wall...but will have to wait until next time as I need to sleep now though as off to London early tomorrow.

<to be continued>

[Adamp81]

Looks like you are making decent progress so far, keep the pics coming, I'm sure everyone would like to see the pics for the garage conversion as well

Out of interest do you work for EMC or are you just a big fan of their t-shirts

[Jasonjo]

Originally Posted by Adamp81

Looks like you are making decent progress so far, keep the pics coming, I'm sure everyone would like to see the pics for the garage conversion as well

Out of interest do you work for EMC or are you just a big fan of their t-shirts

No, I don't work for EMC, just a freebie T-shirt from Microsoft TechEd where they were sponsors I am too scared to wear any of the IT freebies I pickup out in public for worry of ridicule! hence they get used for decorating...

I may start another thread for the Garage conversion bits, or add them to the end of this thread once I have covered the lounge (the main AV event )

[Jasonjo]

Ok, so with the walls ready and all the cabling sorted, I thought I had better get the screen on the wall and see how things looked with the speaker positions and also the cable exists. As can be seen from my original pictures, the plasma is going back onto the wall with the same bracket.

This was a little unnerving as I had to make a few assumption on the best place to exit the cables in order to place them as close to the bottom of the bracket, but also make sure that they could not be seen hanging down below the plasma. The speaker cable exits were a little easier as I could measure these pretty well.

Anyhow, time for a few more piccies

Not sure if it was by luck or judgement, but the cable exits for the plasma cables have worked out really well (phew ) as can be seen below

The location of the cable exists below the plasma were less critical, but I just needed to make sure they would be hidden by the new AV cabinet. I have been looking around of a new for ages (and I mean ages!) and finally decided on the Alphason Abri ABR1100 unit in a Light Oak finish (pics to follow). This ticks all the right boxes in terms of size and most importantly includes a door to keep all my gadgets away from messy little fingers!

<to be continued>

[Jasonjo]

Back quicker than I thought!

I wanted to make the cables exits behind the cabinet look at neat as possible rather than just leaving the holes - they would likely not be seen but I am a bit like that!. After a bit of research on the forums, I decided on using wall plates which are designed for CAT5 modules (or similar) as these have quite a large opening for the cabling. I had seen people selling these wall plates with integrated brushes (like draught excluder's) to make things look even neater. So, after a quick trip to B&Q I decided to make my own version using the wall plates and a cannibalised letterbox draught excluder which I just cut into sections and attached to the back of the wall plate. Total cost for two wall plates and brushes was about a fiver, so pretty pleased What a tight git I hear you say!! well it was fun and takes me back to my Blue Peter days...

Anyhow, here are some shots of the completed wall plate in position

Now that the screen was in position and the cabling was sorted, I could concentrate on getting the speakers mounted. I know a few people are not great fans of mounting the speakers close to the sides of the TV, but with my wall lights and side windows I was a little limited in terms of how far I could move the speakers away from the sides. I decided to put the left, right and centre speakers all equidistant from the plasma for a nice uniform look. I had already done most of the measuring when I planned the cable exits, but after a bit more checking (as I am paranoid ) I got the centre speaker up in position. The height of the speaker is about 64 or 65cm from the floor which is just a little higher than it used to sit when placed on top of the old Dual Oppli AV cabinet (see first picture in the thread)

With the centre in place, I decided to have a bit of a break and start on the rear speakers as I have already marked out their position the night before and it was just a case of simply drilling the holes for the brackets. As I said earlier in the thread, I decided to change my existing rears for something a bit smaller, a little less imposing and also move them to the top of the side walls. The Anthony Gallo Micros fitted the bill well and I have been impressed with them in the past as satellite speakers. Thanks to Eric from Cinema Experience for supplying these quickly and at a great price! I ordered the speakers in a satin silver finish to match my KEF 6000's at the front, and also got matching wall mounts in silver. I am really pleased with the overall look and they sounds pretty good too (more on that later...). Here are a few shots

Once the rears were up, it was back to the fronts to complete all of the speakers. Once all drilled, measured, levelled, and measured again (anal me! ) the speakers were up, as can be seen below

Getting pretty late now, so will probably call it a day...will cover mounting the fire and building the AV cabinet next time...

See ya soon!

<to be continued>

[Jasonjo]

Hi,

Bit of a delay, but back with more pictures...yay!

So, now the plasma and speakers are mounted it was time to get the AV kit back in the room...at last!

I had decided to get a new rack as part of the refit, as my old unit (although very much loved) was just too big and too open with kids on the loose. So I needed to find an AV cabinet as opposed to a stand. After a lot of trawling on these forums and what seemed like hours on Google, I finally settled on the Alphason ABRI ABR1100 in a light oak finish. The size worked well (especially as I was downsizing most of my kit) and allowed my to hide everything away but still be fully remote controllable due to the front glass panel. It is also pretty childproof, which is a pretty major factor with my little girl!

Anyhow, enough guff and onto the piccies.

So here is the cabinet (empty) whilst I got everything built.

The unit is actually really well put together, and very much recommended if it meets you space requirements. One of the things I didn't like about the cabinet was the fact that it had clear glass which meant that you would be able to see the AV kit pretty well, and also see things like inside cables at the back of the unit. So, in the past I have looked at window frosting for our house as a way to obscure windows without using net curtains so had a good idea of the effect this could have on glass. After a quick look around I found quite a few people recommending a product called "Amorf" from Ikea and it was only a couple of quid for a 1.5m roll! this was pretty good as most places online wanted £10 for a similar sheet. Anyhow, as can be seen from the pictures it worked out pretty well and I really like the effect which does a good job of obscuring most items for a nice clean look.

Here is a quick shot of the cabinet and plasma once fully assembled.

So, time to get the kit installed!!!

As I said earlier, as part of the refit I have also changed a fair bit of my kit. It now comprises of:

• Arcam Solo Movie 5.1 DVD/CD/DAB/Amp All-in-One
• DVDO iScan HD+ Video Processor
• Sky+ PVR

I plan to add a PS3 pretty soon, mainly for Blu-ray and other media duties, so need to leave a space for this!

So here is the kit in the cabinet

And some shots with the door closed to see the frosted effect

And the final look

With the cabinet sorted out, the next job was getting the fire wall mounted and connected up.

Other things left to do:

• Get carpet laid to replace the existing laminate flooring
• Install plasma LED lighting (got lights, just need to assemble and mount)
• Find wall and ceiling lights
• Find curtains
• Find wall pictures
• Find a PS3 bargain!
  

<to be continued>

[Jasonjo]

Sneak preview of the fire, more to follow...

<to be continued>

[avnutter]

good job fella!

[Syphonic]

Very tidy looking. Speakers suit the TV very well. Nice!

[elootos]

That's a nice DIY diary and a very well managed and good install. The new setup looks a hell of lot better than your old setup at the beginning (and the wall colours are a marked improvement as well!).

[Jasonjo]

Cheers guys, been fun creating my "DIY diary"

Still a bit to do to finish off, but nearly there now...just need carpet, lights etc to soften the look and feel a little

Will post more as it happens...

Cheers

JJ

[rupees_al]

well that looks sweet. and showed the G/F the fire and she like's so went on your link and registered and can't find it. right search the name and the page is all over the place. ok try doing all that in explorer and wayhay there she blows...
Firefox haters lol...
so she would like more pics of fire please and how easy is it to fit etc how deep is it

tia

great install tho.

[Jasonjo]

Originally Posted by rupees_al

well that looks sweet. and showed the G/F the fire and she like's so went on your link and registered and can't find it. right search the name and the page is all over the place. ok try doing all that in explorer and wayhay there she blows...
Firefox haters lol...
so she would like more pics of fire please and how easy is it to fit etc how deep is it

tia

great install tho.

Thanks!

I plan to post some more pictures of the fire later tonight, so you are in luck!

It was very easy to fit - have a look at the instructions here: http://www.dimplex.co.uk/assets/prod...sue_1_G24a.pdf not hard if you are ok at DIY.

The only hard bit was hiding the cable for the cable connection, but you don't have to do this, you could just plug it in to a normal socket. I didn't want to have any wires showing and was channeling the walls for the plasma cables anyhow.

Here is a direct link to the fire: http://www.theatlanticshop.co.uk/Cat...&action=search

Cheers

JJ

[shrimp3r]

Sorry of you've mentioned it already, but what make/model are your left/right/centre speakers?

Mark Mac

Doh - Just seen your sig.

[Jasonjo]

Originally Posted by shrimp3r

Sorry of you've mentioned it already, but what make/model are your left/right/centre speakers?

Mark Mac

Doh - Just seen your sig.

[Jasonjo]

Ok, so here are some more shots of the 'floating fire'

I took some of these when the fire still had the protective wrapping on the edges (looks like black tape on the sides). I didn't take this off until I was sure I didn't need to move it again.

As you can see from the pictures, the back of the fire looks a bit weird as in real-life it is slightly mirrored so doesn't flash very well.

You can also see how much better the fire looks with a hidden power cable and the addition of the FCU socket.

I am actually really pleased with the fire (as is my wife) and the Optiflame flame effect is actually pretty convincing. The heat output from such a small heater is also pretty impressive. Overall it was a good compromise and I just don't think it would have worked under the plasma, so really glad we opted for the side wall position.

The icing on the cake??? Well, I can control the fire from the Sofa using my Harmony 525 remote control as the fire comes with an IR remote Those with keen eyesight may have also noticed the IR double dimmer light switch...everything has to be remote controlled!!!!

Because I am sad, I also took a video of the Optiflame effect to give those who are interested in the fire a quick demo

Cheers

JJ

<to be continued>

[jolly]

Looks great, nice clean/tidy install

Colours work well together too

[shrimp3r]

What did you do for power? Just drop the kettle lead into the cavity and bring it out at the bottom? I'm planning my screen and I've read recommendations to run a spur up to the screen, still trying to decide what to do.

Mark Mac

[cheltenham2004]

Very nice clean job well done

[marcus2704]

Very nice install. What cables did you choose to run up to the plasma?

[Jasonjo]

Originally Posted by shrimp3r

What did you do for power? Just drop the kettle lead into the cavity and bring it out at the bottom? I'm planning my screen and I've read recommendations to run a spur up to the screen, still trying to decide what to do.

Mark Mac

I wanted to use another FCU behind the plasma (like I used for the fire) but the power below the plasma is already spured off. It is not good practice to spur off a spur from what I gather, so I didn't have a lot of options

So, yep, I ended up just placing the power lead in the cavity and then just plugging it in as normal. Not quite what I wanted, but it is hidden and still allows me to remove power if needs be.

Cheers

JJ

[Jasonjo]

All => Thanks for the praise!

[Jasonjo]

Originally Posted by marcus2704

Very nice install. What cables did you choose to run up to the plasma?

Power Channel (left)

1 x Plasma power kettle lead
2 x Power cables for LED lights

Data Channel (right)

1 x HDMI to HDMI (Scorpion cables by Groundy)
1 x 5BNC to VGA (BetterCables Silver Serpent)
1 x VGA to VGA (Van Damme)
1 x VGA to YUV (BetterCables Silver Serpent)
1 x Svideo (Some crap make )
3 x Speaker cables for L/C/R (QED micro)

As I have a scaler, I really only needed a single video connection, but tried to factor in a bit of future proofing and allow for direct connecting if I want to bypass the scaler.

Cheers

JJ

[snellfish]

love the colour of the room what paint is it, dulux?

The following shots show the final colours we have decided on. We have chosen to use two colours; a Dulux Mellow Mocha (on the left) on the long walls and Dulux Soft Truffle (on the right) on the end walls. The plan is for this to widen the room and make it look less "long and skinny". In hindsight, this has worked pretty well and full credit goes to my good lady wife for this bit

have i got this right?