2009 Living room project / homage to some of AVF’s finest

I hope you're enjoying the fruits of that little purchase then Al :smashin: I'm going to have to borrow my work one which I think has ISO settings...

In the meantime I got started over the weekend and soon remembered how much I hate stripping wallpaper. After nearly a day of pratting around with some useless 'active' spray on wallpaper stripper I buckled and went and bought a steamer.

Anyway I get ahead of myself! Here is how it all started:
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My camera doesn't have a very wide angle so I've tried to stitch two photos together to give a greater sense of the room as it was. My personal highlights included the rats nest behind the unit, HTPC crammed behind the chair and the speakers sat on the floor (surround left firing into the sofa) - Mmmmm lovely!

So all the kit got stripped down and taken up out of harms way to the spare room:
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While I got stripping!
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Just went for B&Q's own brand steamer:
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The first one had a dodgy pressure release valve which capped the sloooow weekend off nicely :rolleyes: No bother exchanging it today though and got another wall done tonight so should still be on track to chase in the electrics and cabling next weekend... :)
 
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Had a plasterer round last night to quote on skimming the whole room including the ceiling. He quoted £350 which was a little over what I budgeted for... Especially as I've decided to overboard the ceiling and back stud wall that leads out to the hallway for a little extra sound proofing before the room is skimmed.

Also drew the plan for the false chimney onto the wall to get a feel for the scales, TV placement etc in the real world and it seems ok. So off to Wickes (bit sad but I'm pretty impressed with their C16 studwork timber plus I have a 20% voucher at the mo) to get all the materials ordered :)
 
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Bit of a duff weekend this week as work got a little crazy. Have booked Thursday and Friday off though and have all the timber and plasterboard being delivered so should see some real progress by next Monday.

Here's a few pics of where the rooms up to anyway with the skirtings off.
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You can just about see on this pic of the back wall that the pipes are along the skirting board. This has always bugged me so going to take the opportunity to chase them into the wall for a better finish.

Lastly I knocked through into the existing chimney to make sure it will be suitable to drop all the cables down from the loft - should work fine :)
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Might need to fashion some form of cover for the drive and spotlight to protect them from any possible debris...
 
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Had a 4 day weekend on the lounge refit and starting to make a little progress.

First of all I set to work on those pipes. Dropped them to 10mm which allowed them to be set back into the wall, deep enough to be skimmed over.

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I then started on the first run of cabling. Drilled through into the real chimney (which to my surprise shoots off at an angle to the left) and fed the speaker and HDMI cables down to the hole that I made last week.

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I then took a brick out in the loft space where the Vista PC and Sky boxes will be located and taped my club hammer to some old coaxial to drop a pull line down. The metal bar in the loft shot is to just stop any cables falling back down. Especially the USB extenders which are just long enough!

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After this I made a start on overboarding the ceiling and back wall. Had to draft in some help for the ceiling which was an absolute swine of a job but managed most of the back wall myself with a nice little cut to get a full panel round the door.

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Hopefully should add a little more sound proofing to the room and let my better half get some kip when my xbox live comms get a little out of hand :rolleyes: :D

The weekend was cracking on and light was fading (had no proper light since overboarding the ceiling) so made a start on the frame. After yet another trip to B&Q :rolleyes: for some 100mm screws for fixing the frame to the floor and walls I started to build it up. Just finished the speaker slots before my little girl had to go to bed and, therefore, couldn't use the drop saw anymore.

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Still a bit to do before Friday when I've got the plasterer booked in to skim the whole room. A few late nights lay ahead of me this week I think...
 
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Looking good...I'm just about to start my own project. I don't know if I would have known where to start if it was this forum! :thumbsup:

I like seeing the photos of stripped walls etc, as this where you see how others completed the small jobs.

Keep up the good work!
 
Good luck with your project digimak :thumbsup: You're spot on about the diy forum though there is an absolute wealth of tips in here ;)

I was worried that the work in progress stuff was getting a little boring but sadly there seems to be a hell of a lot of prep work before you can get to the cool stuff.. :rolleyes:
 
Good luck with your project digimak :thumbsup: You're spot on about the diy forum though there is an absolute wealth of tips in here ;)

I was worried that the work in progress stuff was getting a little boring but sadly there seems to be a hell of a lot of prep work before you can get to the cool stuff.. :rolleyes:

Like I said its good to see how other people solve these small simliar issues. I wouldn't worry how long it takes mate, the more time you spend on these parts the better the finish you'll get, then you can just sit down and enjoy all your hard work! Looking forward to seeing how this progresses. Good luck
 
Have you reached the ' OMG what have i done ??' phase yet ?

What was that when you posted up that pic of yourself in those denim cut-off shorts :devil: :rotfl:

Cheeky sod ;) :smashin:

Booking the plasterer on a tight deadline hasn't giving me time to think about squat really just heads down but I know where you're coming from!

Anyway when can I hear more about your networked Media Centre integration...? :)
 
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You mean my fully distibuted VMC/My Movies/My TV network ?

Errr nowhere.....:(

I really should update my thread :-/

Word of advice if its not to late....get yourself a Gigabit switch ( your pc's should have gigabit NICs in them any way ) as it will make ripping all your movies so much less painless if you are going to be ripping them from a remote PC. I rip all mine from one of the other PC's in the house and move them up to the server ( or rip em direct ) and the difference between transferring at 10MB/s and 70Mb/s will really speed things up. Used to really wind me up waiting for a 6GB file to be copied.........
 
Will be keeping a close eye on this one, as the Cinema room is now complete and missus got a glimpse of elootos fab build and now she wants the same :)

This looks like the same, so make sure you don't leave any bits out LoL

Good luck
 
@ deefadog - This is indeed pretty much a carbon copy of Elootos' work. I can't imagine you will gleam much from this thread that you wont find in his own - it's that good :thumbsup: But I will be as comprehensive as I can just in case ;)

@ Groove - Will do some digging about fella on those. The few rips I've copied over from my lappy have taken a stupidly long time. I do plan to build in a slot loading drive into the roof of the hub so I can rip directly to the PC in the loft but those switches sound like they could be a good back up - ta pal :smashin:
 
Cheers, well you know what they say - 2 threads are better than one :)

One idea i have thought about (but not sure how to achieve it) is on the recess where the kit will go, i was thinking about having sliding doors (Think Star Trek) activated with a sensor, so will open to insert DVD etc, but will close when your away from it. - would have to be some etched glass to allow the remote to so it's thing, but food for thought maybe??
 
With a bit more knowledge than I have don't see why you couldn't hook up some sort of PIR trigger to a motorised opening whatsit...?! (That's the technical term I believe... :D) :)

No doubt right in it's way is where my cats would call their bed or something equally annoying! :D Will look forward to seeing how you get on with that :thumbsup:
 
With a bit more knowledge than I have don't see why you couldn't hook up some sort of PIR trigger to a motorised opening whatsit...?! (That's the technical term I believe... :D) :)

Hi Jon
I think you`ll find that all the technical termed items fall under one name which is a DUEBREE

Infact when I worked darn pit everything was called a DUEBREE

just thought I`d let you know, btw its coming on a treat

cheers Al
 
Over lunch today, fed by the news of Sky+HD's new enticing price point, my mind started to go over how I would like to integrate all my kit into other rooms/displays... Sort've came up with this framework that I will work to moving forward... (BTW the reason for the multiple inputs to the Philips 32PFL9603 is the silly way you have to assign profiles to each of the HDMI inputs - Like PC or Game - to restrict or open up certain image processing options)

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EDIT: I may also drop a feed down to the bedroom from the PC to the old Samsung LE26R41BD on the the left as well (using the VGA output on the motherboard)

I got all excited with that and then landed with a bump when I got home to, as Groove so rightly put it, the mess!

Still finished off the frame tonight and got the Premier Mount AM2 Swing Out LCD Arm on the wall. Only paid £20 for the AM2 as it was B-Grade from AV Rabbit but when it arrived it looked like new to me...!

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I've left the stand on the TV for now as it will be off and on again over the next couple of days until the plastering is done.

Gonna be a tight squeeze getting everything boxed off for Friday but should get there, fingers crossed....:rolleyes:
 
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Just to keep the thread as detailed as possible. I ordered 15 x 2.4m lengths of C16 63mm x 38mm studwork timber from Wickes. I thought this would be enough for the frame on both the FCB and the Pelmet (which will house the projector screen) and the batons for the Hub.

Looks like I may have under estimated this a little as I have pretty much used it all on the FCB frame. The off-cuts will be enough for the batons on the hub but I think I will need to order some more timber for the pelmet...
 
Well I went to work with the lounge looking like this...

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And came home with it looking like this!

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It was nice of them to plaster my room with nutella! I've been assured it will dry pink ;)

May also have to get the neighbours a bottle of wine this weekend though as my late night efforts to get the room ready for today only finished at 1am this morning :eek:

Phase 2 (mdf pelmet and hub) kicks off next week :)
 
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That looks really good mate, a pro would be well happy.

Posting so I can see the progress :thumbsup:
 
Fantastic progress so far. Looking forward to next week now :cool:
 
Thanks for the kind words fellas. The plaster's drying nicely and I hope to keep the updates coming fairly regularly once I get back on it next week.

In the mean time as the living room has been trashed and all my consoles upstairs, I didn't find out the Resi 5 demo had hit our shores till today :eek: So I hooked up the 360 tonight to download it and took the opportunity to check that I am getting the desired Ambilight effect in the recess for the TV. Took a few pics and its a bit of an AVF cliche but they really don't do it justice but I thought I would post them up anyway for those interested to have a look at.

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This last shot is a half decent example of how adaptive Spectra 2 is over the previous incarnations of Ambilight...
 
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