Scooby's finally got a home cinema

Scooby247

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Good evening everyone.

For too long I've looked on with envy of your awesome living rooms and garage conversions but I've finally had the opportunity to make a grand mess of my perfectly nice house and it is all the fault of AVF!;)

I'm well done the road with my build so I'll play a bit of catch up and try and remember the pit falls and gotcha's along the way and if it helps out others the that would be just perfect.

Thanks for looking.
 
Let's start here. This was my living room. I had the Optoma HD25 ceiling mounted and Monitor Audio BX2's in a 5.0 setup. The projected image lined up pretty well so it sat just above the TV. We had this setup for a few years and loved it but it was full of compromises. The beemer could only really be used in Winter or the dead of night as we could not really control the light in the room and the rear speakers were pretty much hidden behind the sofa's.
 

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This was our conservatory. Like all conservatories it was either -10 or +400 degrees. It was also in a poor state. A lot of the wood had started rotting and the roof contained an assortment of dead bugs and wildlife. Absolutely no AV kit in here & that would never do!

So the grand plan was to knock the conservatory down and replace it with something more sturdy. We would rip all the AV (minus the tv) out of the living room and return it to just a living room. We would then take the opportunity to build a discrete home cinema in our new room.

My goal here was to have a large TV rather than a projector (the width of the new room restricted the projected image size) add Atmos 5.1.2 to the mix and a comfy sofa and I'd be a happy boy. The final challenge was to keep the speakers in wall and make the room as discrete as possible.
 

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So it turns out that there is not much holding conservatories up.

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New foundations going in. We are extending out another couple of feet.
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Timber frame going up. Mega excited to actually see the space for the first time. Initial thoughts are "ITS HUGE"!
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I should not forget to mention the shopping list.

Even at this stage I was pretty much set on getting a 55" Samsung Q9FN and using Monitor Audio in Wall/Ceiling speakers from the CP range to deliver the 5.1.2 Atmos setup. All of this will be driven by the Denon 3500.

That was the plan. It turns out that building new rooms is an expensive damn business.
 
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Really taking shape now. First fix electrics and AV cables all being run into position.
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Even the start of the roof. Speaker cables are everywhere at the moment.
 
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My Garage has seen better days.
 
First Problem! I've just seen the size of the one connect boxes the new Samsung's use. It's blinking huge and I have no idea how I'm going to hide that in the wall. But... whilst I was shopping for the Samsung the LG caught my eye. I then ran some demo material through a 55" c7 and it simply looked stunning. From that point onwards my head was turned and I no longer had to worry about the one connect box.

As the new LG's were just starting to appear on the shop floor and there was some healthy discounts on the go so after initially wanting to go for a 55" Q9 I am now a owner of a shiny new LG Oled 65" C8 and it is GLORIOUS!

First problem fixed! :)
 
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It's all coming together really fast now. We have insulation coming out our ears! The Velux's are in and look brill and we still have speaker cables everywhere! Please excuse the silly cut outs in the ceiling space.

Roof tiles are nearly there and once the door goes back on we should* be water tight.
 
I must mention speakers shortly. Rich @Seriously Ltd is dangerous man to follow on these forums.
 
That's very well constructed. Looks really solid. Certainly an improvement on the old conservatory. Looking forward to seeing further progress.
 
Hi Scooby,

Project looks great and will be keeping a eye on it. I'm looking to rip my conservatory down and build a proper room.
Can I ask how deep you original foundations are you have built off for the walls?
Just wondering as I'm having issues with the council.

Cheers
 
now you will just need blinds to block the light out for the velux

You can buy - and I would highly recommend - Velux blinds for every size of Velux window - they obviously fit perfectly and block out 100% of the light.

If you have run power up there, then mains powered blinds are probably the way forward - but they also do solar powered versions, which use a built in small solar panel to charge a battery built into the motorised 'head' of the blind. These work surprisingly well - we've had one in our youngest lads bedroom for over 9 years now, and it's still going strong - never needed to replace the battery! (Bought it off eBay for a fraction of the RRP as I recall).
 
Yeah, we have a solar powered version in our en-suite and it's superb. I'd definitely opt for electric blinds.
 
Hi Scooby,

Project looks great and will be keeping a eye on it. I'm looking to rip my conservatory down and build a proper room.
Can I ask how deep you original foundations are you have built off for the walls?
Just wondering as I'm having issues with the council.

Cheers
Thanks mate. I honestly could not tell you what the actual depth was but we did need to change to the existing single skin foundation to a double for the brick work. I have attached the drawing below as it's all dutch to me.

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Thanks @Marvt74 & @The Dreamer
The Solar panel blinds are absolutely the way I want to go with these. Sadly I'll have to wait a while until the bank allows me to buy any new toys. We are not on speaking terms right now.:eek:
 
So as promised earlier I needed to chat about the speakers. I've always had Monitor audio speakers. 20 years or so ago they were the first Audiophile(ish) upgrade I ever purchased and I've never really looked back since.

Initially I was looking at the CP-WT380 or the CP-WT240LCR for the front three but running one of those as a centre looked a bit odd to me. Then I started looking at the CPIW260X.
After reading a significant amount I convinced myself that the 260's were going to be the way forward. I even went and cut out some templates and realised they are HUGE!

At that point I knew, as I had convinced myself, that I could look at that sort of budget and time after time I always came back to the M&K IW950's. Then I spoke to Rich @Seriously Ltd
and it was game over. A few days later I was the proud owner of 5 shiny new M&K speakers.

I told you he was a dangerous man to know.
 
Now that the speaker decision had been made I could start measuring out the locations. As always there is a tonne of compromises.
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Plasterboard going up. I think I've measured where everything is three times already.
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My builder. He's a funny man. :thumbsup:
 
All the speaker cut outs have been done now and a test fitting of the speakers just to make sure everything was snug.
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I should have added our original back door is back on and we are now water tight!
 
Optoma HD25e, Samsung KS7500, Pioneer SC2023, Mede8er, Virgin v6 x2
Monitor Audio BX2's,B1's & BRLCR (still need a SUB)
Synology DS1515+

I really need to update my Sig.
 

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