My First cinema room

[dobbin]

From Idea to New Cinema Room

Hi

After seeing some of the rooms on this site I was motivated to build one of my own.

The idea was about a year ago. We bought a new house and decided to build a wrap around extension. This would provide us with a new kitchen, utility room, Shower room and our own Cinema Room! I designed it so that adjoining the cinema room there is another smaller room to hold all of the equipment so that the Cinema Room itself was pretty empty of equipment (and hopefully distracting background noise and light).

I then decided to gut the whole house and floodwire it with Cat5e, Satellite cable, alarm cable, speaker cable. I would try and set up a system so that I could pipe music to every room and also video.

Work began about six months ago and is now nearing completion.

I will take you through in chronological order.

Here are the photos of work not long after it commenced.

Photos from left to rigt show
1. Inside the Cinema Room
2. Inside the Cinema Room
3. Looking to the Equipment Room
4. Looking into the Equipment Room
5. In the Equipment Room looking into the Cinema Room
6. The Wiring in the loft space

[dobbin]

When the room was finished I decided to paint the walls Chocolate Suede (thanks Inzaman) and the woodwork bitter chocolate. (a chocolate room – I hope it doesn’t melt!)

I then started construction of the star ceiling. This was to be 2 sheets of 12mm MDF @ 8’ x 4’. I built a frame running along each side wall so that I could suspend each of the sheets while I was adding the stars. This consisted of drilling holes and feeding the fibre optic cables through one by one. A long task!

When all the fibres were added I then swung each of the sheets up so that they met in the middle.

[dobbin]

I then started construction of the screen. Firstly the frame. The screen size is going to be approximately 81” x 47”. After construction of the frame I temporarily used an old sheet as a screen cloth in order to test the setup so far. I have bought some blackout material from Dunelm Mill to use as the real screen material. I also made a temporary mount for the projector (a cradle) again for testing.

[dobbin]

I then constructed a shelf to run around the perimeter of the star ceiling. This had a number of uses including – installing downlighters and wiring, running speaker cable and somewhere to put my blue LED ropelight so that it will shine up on the star ceiling.

[dobbin]

That is all complete and the big switch on. I am pretty happy with the result and it all seems to be working okay. Fitted a stainless steel dimmer for the downlighters. I have also bought a ceiling projector mount.

[dobbin]

That is pretty much where I currently am at.

I am hoping to get it up and running this bank holiday weekend

[inzaman]

Wow looks very smart at the moment, those star ceilings look excellent; i bet they are quite awkward to do though? If i had the ceiling height then i'd like to attempt one.
Keep the pictures coming

[Nick 156]

Looks superb dobbin, love the stars on the ceiling!

What equipment are you installing in there?

Keep those pictures coming

Good luck for the big switch on this weekend

[dobbin]

Thanks for the comments.

I have been 'collecting' the equipment now for a few months.
I will be installing

- Yamaha RX-V2600 http://www.yamaha-uk.com/av_amps_rec...product_id=121
- Acoustic Energy EVO 3B Home Theatre Speaker System http://www.hifi4less.com/product.php/484/0/
- Hitachi PJ-TX200 http://www.hitachidigitalmedia.com/D...?productid=487
- HTPC - I have built this myself

I did think about increasing the 5.1 speaker system to 6.1 or 7.1 but as the room is only about 10ft x 10ft I wasn't sure it was worth it? (still not sure)

Only the HTPC has been switched on. The other three are still in their boxes awaiting the finish of the room.

[mrm3]

simply excellent

though why is your projector angled as it should be square to the screen and then lens shift if off centered? ...or is it just the photo?

[dobbin]

Thanks for the comments.
The cradle for the projector was temporary.
I have bought a proper ceiling mount now.

[louishm]

Amazing: thats basically all i have to say

[Xan]

You have done a superb job there, i loooooovvvve that ceiling!! Well done mate.

[Dony]

Great Job, now just stick on some Pink Floyd and enjoy that ceiling!!!

[waf-tastic]

That is a great room you've got there!

I was looking at making a star ceiling but didn't have the room height in the end. Is it very distracting during a film or do you turn it off? I always used to think that lights were annoying in a cinema, but now I've finished mine, I often have the side or centre lights on but dimmed quite low.