Help Us Design Our Living Room Cinema From Scratch

[THERINGMASTA]

Just got exchange of contracts on my first house. Me and a freind (who i am buying the house with) will get started on decorating as soon as we get the keys.

We are hoping to create a home cinema style living room (which is remarkably small). And we need help to design it from experienced people such as yourselves, please....

So far we have/will have:

Samsung LE40F71BX 40" High Definition 1080p LCD TV
Sony PS3
Surround Sound (not chosen yet - £400 budget)
Hundreds of DVDs and a few games
DVD Player
Xbox 360.
A two seater settee and armchair

The trouble is fitting it all in the room without it looking crowded. Here is the current room layout:

First thing is first:

We will be mounting the TV on a wall. We can't decide whether it should go on the fireplace OR on the wall next to the stairs opposite the kitchen.

Which would be better?

Quite like the idea of being able to watch the TV from the kitchen, but i don't think it will look too good between the doorway and understairs cupboard. Which is why i thought we should put it on the fire place, which will be nice and symmetrical, which i think will be more aesthetically pleasing and better for placement of surround sound speakers.

Any help is much appreciate!

[hornydragon]

whats your budget you could make a very cool entertainment media room out of that space. There is a lot of options and things to work out but dont decorate that room yet leave it last as much as you can furniture the lot,
Is the fire place live?
WHat is the construction of the House? new build? old? newly renovated? What will you Watch play listen too?
Who will use it? (dont say me)
What else will room be used for?
is plan to scale?

[THERINGMASTA]

Lots of questions,

Originally Posted by hornydragon

whats your budget

Our budget is fairly limited, and as yet hasn't been decided. We don't currently have an abundance of cash solely for that room as two other rooms have to be decorated. After everything on my list is paid for we will have about £1,000-2,000 to play with.

Originally Posted by hornydragon

Is the fire place live?

As far as i'm aware it is. We haven't had it checked by a professional yet so we won't be starting any fires anytime soon. But we may do on occasion in the future

Originally Posted by hornydragon

WHat is the construction of the House? new build? old? newly renovated?

Its a victorian brick built terrace house. It is fairly up to date in fittings and decoration. Also the house is (original) wood flooring throughout - will this affect acoustics?

Originally Posted by hornydragon

What will you Watch play listen too?

We will be watching blu-ray and dvd movies, playing games on the Playstation 3 (and possibly an xbox 360 if i get round to buying one), and watching sky digital tv. I doubt we'll be listening to much music in this room, but i won't rule it out just yet.

Originally Posted by hornydragon

Who will use it? (dont say me)

Not completely sure of your question buddy as it will be me. but it will also be my mate and there may be a couple of lads nights watching the game. There will be no kids around.

Originally Posted by hornydragon

What else will room be used for?

Well, the other main use is a walkway between the kitchen and the other half of the house. I can't think of anything else.

Originally Posted by hornydragon

is plan to scale?

The dimensions are the ones provided by the estate agent. Unfortunately all the other details are from memory and dimensions of the fireplace etc are guesstimated from a single photo of the room that i have in a folder at work.

As soon as we have the keys i'll get exact dimensions and draw a better plan (preferably not on paint) as well as take a few photos.

I'm planning on documenting this whole process from start to finish.

Thanks for responding .

[MarkP80]

TRM,

Seems obvious, but you need to think about where your seating will fit. If you put your sofa along the wall opposite the fire, does it make walking from the hall to the kitchen impractical? If you put it on the kitchen wall, does it impinge on the window? (with this option, how would the tv look on the opposite wall?) Or vice versa, does the sofa fit on the cupboard wall, or does it stop you accessing it?

If you put the tv above the fire, is it too high for comfortable viewing?

As Hornydragon says, don't decorate the room until you have planned exactly what you are doing, and take your time - best only do it once!

Cheers,
MarkP

[EViLDONKEY]

Hi THERINGMASTA! My room is similar layout. A great way to save space is to build your AV equipment into the under stairs cupboard and run cables to the TV in the lounge.

my room with this setup (with same TV) is here EVILDONKEY'S Home Cinema Progress Thread

Good luck

[hornydragon]

Originally Posted by EViLDONKEY

Hi THERINGMASTA! My room is similar layout. A great way to save space is to build your AV equipment into the under stairs cupboard and run cables to the TV in the lounge.

YEs i had that thought as well but it means keeping sofa on the walk way wall to kitchen may not be an issue but could be and the one samll window isnt ideally placed for AV use. Screen on chimney is possible.

Sofa opposite window with TV on kitchen wall is another option sounds like you will need some "media" storage which may fit nicely either side of chimney

[Gregory]

Our first house had an almost identical room (almost to the inch). We had it arranged with a sofa against the wall between the hall passage and the under stairs cupboard. We did play with it against the 'passage' wall, but it was an almighty nuisance due to the high levels of traffic between the front of the house and kitchen. If you do want that, I'd strongly urge you to at least try it out in 'real life' for a few weeks and see if drives you mad.

My best bet would be to put the screen on the wall between the understairs cupboard and the hall, which would allow easy routing of video cables backwards to the understairs space, so giving you a clean fit, and giving you the ability to see it from the kitchen. Given tight space, you could even look at using the under stairs cupboard as the space for an infinite baffle sub-woofer (or close) which will give you a big sound in a room given that the room wouldn't be large enough for a large sub.

As for surround placement - well, the room is amlmost square, so I don't suppose it makes a huge difference as long as the screen isn't in a corner.

BTW, if the fire isn't live then a fishtank looks cool instead (at least, we thought so).

Cheers

Greg

[THERINGMASTA]

Update:

We have decided on putting the TV on the wall opposite the kitchen, to allow viewing from the kitchen, and we'll just put the sofa against the window wall.

We are going to chase into the wall (not sure which side of the wall yet, we might do it on the other side where the stairs are) and bury all the cables.

The understairs cupboard is bigger than i remembered (approximately twice the size of the diagram above). And is going to be shelved out. The rear wall of the cupboard will be used for dvd storage, and the right hand side (when viewed from the living room) will be used to house the dvd player, sky digital box, and PS3. With additional space for an Xbox 360 or other device.

Me and my friend have booked next week off of work and will be getting started on the decorating. (Unfortunately we will be doing other rooms aswell so we wont get it finished)

Our sky digital is being organised today. The TV will be ordered tomorrow and then delivered next week, hopefully. And we are yet to choose a suitable bracket to mount it on the wall - anybody got any suggestions?

I still haven't chosen a surround sound system as the ones available at my local dealer were way over budget; i haven't got £1,200 to spend on a 5.1.
I will be looking at another dealer tomorrow - are there any online shops that i might be able to purchase a good system for under £400?

I am yet to take photos as i've been pretty busy this week, but i will try and take some of the room this afternoon.

BTW, if the fire isn't live then a fishtank looks cool instead (at least, we thought so).

Do you mean embed the tank into the fire place?
Have you got any images of yours?

Thanks for all the feedback, its much appreciated and has helped a lot so far.

[Gregory]

Not quite embed, though you could - we put in on a small table in the recess left when we took out a gas fire. But, there was only an inch either side, and we could have put a surround on so that it would have been embedded (but accessible to clean etc.). Don't have any photos to hand - it was in the days before digital cameras, and I haven't digitised all the old photos yet.

G

[rambo13]

Originally Posted by EViLDONKEY

Hi THERINGMASTA! My room is similar layout. A great way to save space is to build your AV equipment into the under stairs cupboard and run cables to the TV in the lounge.

my room with this setup (with same TV) is here EVILDONKEY'S Home Cinema Progress Thread

Good luck

Lovely set up

What size is your room!
Cheers
Rambo13

[THERINGMASTA]

My computer hasn't been working much but finally i have PHOTOS!

The room as we got it:

The soon to be AV cupboard:

The TV Wall:

The opposite wall and fireplace (with light blue base coat):

The room has now been painted bright yellow but i haven't yet taken photos.
All the crappy shelving has also been taken out of that cupboard also, ready for polyfilla and painting.


The TV arrived yesterday as well as the sound system (JVC TH-L1).

Remaining photos to follow (i have to take them first).

[THERINGMASTA]

Our rough plans for the understairs cupboard: