puffy5
Established Member
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- Sep 20, 2006
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A little background first.
Back in 2012 we extended our house and built a dedicated home cinema - the thread for which can be found below:
Puffys' Garage to Cinema Conversion
The last photo shows a plasma on the wall but i eventually ended up with an Epson projector and fixed screen - it’s just that i never got round to updating the thread.
Fast forward 3 years and we are now living in our new (for us) house.
In this house there isn’t really any scope for a dedicated room due to several factors including cost and layout. However, my wife has (surprisingly) agreed to having all of the home cinema equipment in the lounge (bar the projector).
This thread will take you through this new project as it moves through the various stages.
So the photo below shows the fireplace wall:
We ‘ummed’ and ‘arred’ over which wall to have the TV on but in the end decided not to put it above the fireplace but to go slightly against convention and put it on the internal wall opposite. The fireplace would be blocked up.
There were several benefits to this:
Below is a photo of the TV wall as it stands now:
Initially we were thinking of getting a media unit to house all the av equipment in but i then had the idea of hiding all the equipment away in a cupboard directly behind the wall pictured above. This is the cupboard:
As you can see, it is currently the home for the vacuum and a random office chair!
Putting all the AV equipment in here will give us a nice clutter free wall with just the TV, speakers and a nice floating cabinet on it.
However, hiding all the equipment in the cupboard is going to create another problem...control! (or lack of)
In the old cinema room i had a Harmony One to control everything but as it needs line of sight with the equipment it is going to be rendered useless. I think the solution we’re going to go for is a Harmony Elite utilising the mini IR blaster for the TV.
Speaking of the TV. The Samsung has been with us for 6+ years now and it was decided that we would replace it for something sleeker.
From my wife’s point of view she wanted something thinner and better looking. From my point of view i wanted a 4K Smart TV with great picture quality and a user friendly operating system. After reading many reviews i decided that the TX-50CX802B from Panasonic fit the bill nicely.
After hunting around a bit i found it within our budget from CO-OP Electrical. It’s due to be delivered on Thursday.
Job#1:
Remove the fireplace and block up:
Fireplace removed and insulation packed into space left behind:
Plasterboard cut to size and no nailed into place:
Skimmed ready to paint once plaster has dried fully:
I did buy a vent to allow the chimney to breath but we found that there was a vent on the (external) chimney on the outside so there was actually no need for it.
In the photo of the TV wall above you can see the radiator to the left of the TV cabinet. We didn’t really want to be staring at a radiator all the time when watching tele so there were a couple of options:
Option 1 would be costly and time consuming to do so we opted for replacing it with an upright radiator. This should be coming this week and will be another job to add to the list!
So that pretty much brings me up to where we are as of today. The next job will be to mount the new TV on it’s bracket. From there i’ll be able to work out where and how the cables are going to run to the TV and the speakers. It’s going to be a lot of work but i am looking forward to it.
Back in 2012 we extended our house and built a dedicated home cinema - the thread for which can be found below:
Puffys' Garage to Cinema Conversion
The last photo shows a plasma on the wall but i eventually ended up with an Epson projector and fixed screen - it’s just that i never got round to updating the thread.
Fast forward 3 years and we are now living in our new (for us) house.
In this house there isn’t really any scope for a dedicated room due to several factors including cost and layout. However, my wife has (surprisingly) agreed to having all of the home cinema equipment in the lounge (bar the projector).
This thread will take you through this new project as it moves through the various stages.
So the photo below shows the fireplace wall:
We ‘ummed’ and ‘arred’ over which wall to have the TV on but in the end decided not to put it above the fireplace but to go slightly against convention and put it on the internal wall opposite. The fireplace would be blocked up.
There were several benefits to this:
- With the fireplace blocked up we would have better layout flexibility.
- We could get a larger sofa (on order) along the ex fireplace wall.
- The gas fire that would hardly ever be used would be removed and sold and the money used to help fund the project.
Below is a photo of the TV wall as it stands now:
Initially we were thinking of getting a media unit to house all the av equipment in but i then had the idea of hiding all the equipment away in a cupboard directly behind the wall pictured above. This is the cupboard:
As you can see, it is currently the home for the vacuum and a random office chair!
Putting all the AV equipment in here will give us a nice clutter free wall with just the TV, speakers and a nice floating cabinet on it.
However, hiding all the equipment in the cupboard is going to create another problem...control! (or lack of)
In the old cinema room i had a Harmony One to control everything but as it needs line of sight with the equipment it is going to be rendered useless. I think the solution we’re going to go for is a Harmony Elite utilising the mini IR blaster for the TV.
Speaking of the TV. The Samsung has been with us for 6+ years now and it was decided that we would replace it for something sleeker.
From my wife’s point of view she wanted something thinner and better looking. From my point of view i wanted a 4K Smart TV with great picture quality and a user friendly operating system. After reading many reviews i decided that the TX-50CX802B from Panasonic fit the bill nicely.
After hunting around a bit i found it within our budget from CO-OP Electrical. It’s due to be delivered on Thursday.
Job#1:
Remove the fireplace and block up:
Fireplace removed and insulation packed into space left behind:
Plasterboard cut to size and no nailed into place:
Skimmed ready to paint once plaster has dried fully:
I did buy a vent to allow the chimney to breath but we found that there was a vent on the (external) chimney on the outside so there was actually no need for it.
In the photo of the TV wall above you can see the radiator to the left of the TV cabinet. We didn’t really want to be staring at a radiator all the time when watching tele so there were a couple of options:
- Move the radiator off this wall and the under the front window.
- Replace the radiator for something a bit more pleasing to the eye.
Option 1 would be costly and time consuming to do so we opted for replacing it with an upright radiator. This should be coming this week and will be another job to add to the list!
So that pretty much brings me up to where we are as of today. The next job will be to mount the new TV on it’s bracket. From there i’ll be able to work out where and how the cables are going to run to the TV and the speakers. It’s going to be a lot of work but i am looking forward to it.