The Little Cinema of Burnley

adam-burnley

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First of all, a bit of background to set the scene...

Bought the house in 1999 as a new-build. Fancied building a dedicated room using the garage when I got my first 5.1 system around 2006, but never found the time. Kids (twins) came along in 2010, and we decided the garage should be put to better use, and subsequently had it converted to a 'playroom' :facepalm:

Pretty much stopped playing PS3 games and watching movies as the volume always had to be one above mute :(

Fast forward to late 2016, and a redecoration of the living room leads to a new Samsung 4K HDR TV, and reinvigorates my enthusiasm for movies again. However, I still had that 5.1 system I bought in 2006, and I immediately noticed it was struggling post decorating, probably through the addition of thick carpet and curtains. I decided new speakers and sub would be required, and turned to avforums for advice!

I demoed a few different speakers, and was also invited to a couple of forums members houses to listen to their systems (thanks @Steven1210 and @DodgeTheViper ). I took the wife along to the demo at Dodge's,and she was so impressed by the room and the system that she decided that we needed the same!

The living room hasn't lost out totally though, It's ended up with MK MP-7 LCR, Emotiva ERD-1 surrounds and a BK XXLS400-FF sub :D

I also took the opportunity to replace the Sony HT in a box system in the Orangery with a Kef T301 LCR and T101 surrounds. Well, it would have been rude not to ;)

Anyway, on to the subject in hand. It was decided that the spare bedroom could be made in to the new kids playroom, freeing up the existing room for the cinema. However, as it used to be a single integral garage, it is reasonably long but quite narrow. The finished dimensions of the room were 5.22m x 2.5m, whilst the front third steps in a bit to allow for two layers or brick (to support the wall above), so was just 2.34m. Just big enough to fit a 92" screen, and two rows of seats.

Right, first job was to wire up the new playroom for the wall mounted TV, fit 4 x Philips Hue GU10 colour downlights in the ceiling, move the designer radiator from the old playroom, paint and fit a new carpet. Normally that would take me a year or more to complete, but I was strangely able to get it done in just a few weeks!

So kids moved, time to setup the AV gear I'd been collecting over the preceding months (mostly from the classifieds) and give it a blast. Everything worked great, and it sounded fantastic, even in an untreated room, however, you could hear the dialogue really clearly upstairs in the kids bedrooms, there was no chance they'd be able to sleep with anything played at reasonable volume levels.

I started a thread on whether it would be worth sound-proofing given the limited width of the room, as I was concerned about losing space and ending up with too small a space. Ultimately time will tell whether sound-proofing will be worth the effort and cost, but something had to be done as being restricted to mute +1 was pointless!

Here is the "before" picture -

Before.jpg


As this was formerly a garage, the front of the room faces on to a small driveway, and then on to the pavement and road. The wife didn't want to lose the window, and I didn't want the hassle of going through planning, so the window stays.

The other decision to make was where to put the screen. The obvious choice would have been on the solid back wall, as a fixed AT screen of 2.5m wide would have been fitted, however, that would have created a problem for the seating position as the door is at the opposite end, which is only 2.3m wide. I considered reversing the door so that it opened in to the hallway, but as the plan is to sit the second row of seats on a riser, that would have meant stepping up in the room, and I didn't like that idea. So, the tough decision was taken to have the screen at the window end, which meant a much more expensive motorised drop down AT screen would be required, and definitely limited it to 92" diagonal.

Windows are the worst thing you can have in a cinema room, but I'm hoping that a perfect fit black out blind will do the job of blocking out light. If not, I'll add some thick black curtains as well. Windows can also be an issue for sound leakage, however, during my initial tests I could hardly hear anything on the drive, and virtually nothing on the pavement, so the double glazing must be okay. Fortunately this is a detached house, so the neighbours definitely won't be disturbed.

So first thing to do was pull of the plasterboard and see what was behind...

20170714_140338.jpg


Well, the builders that did the conversion had used 4x2 stud and left quite a sizable gap between the block work. Just a shame they hadn't packed it out with Rockwool instead of leaving it empty!

Time to pull the rest off...

20170714_153213.jpg


Pulling down plasterboard kicks up a LOT of dust, so this came in really handy -

20170714_130612 (1).jpg


I also pulled down the ceiling to reveal the joists. The front section beyond the metal strip is a small roof, so above the fluffy insulation is felt and tiles.

20170911_094746.jpg


Pulling down the plasterboard revealed a lot of electrical cable, so I got the sparky round to make sure everything was safe.

I also had another job for him....
 
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As this was originally the garage, there were a few obstacles to deal with. The boiler was originally here, but that was moved to the utility room when the original conversion was done. However, the consumer unit and water meter panel remained -

Utilities.jpg


The consumer unit was about 150mm deep, and was 18 years old, so had it replaced with a larger recessed unit (as can be seen in the previous post). The new unit also added a second RCD, and the sparky was able to split sockets and lights much better than before. There is also enough room to create a separate ring in the cinema room, so hopefully no interference from microwaves and fridges etc.

The water panel is about 90mm deep, but it seems there isn't much I can do about that without incurring a lot of cost.

20170803_192431 (1).jpg


There are various gas and water pipes on the same wall that I can't easily move, so will have to build the new wall around them.
 
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Here are some Sketchup diagrams, starting with the bare room. The walls are constructed from concrete breeze block, and the two external walls (opposite the door and the window wall) are cavity dual leaf.

This shows where part of the wall steps in, and leads on to the hall through the doorway. You can also see a waste pipe tucked in behind the edge of the stepped wall, which services the en-suite above.

Elevation.png


Floor

When the room was originally converted, a floating floor was installed on top of the concrete base - a stud frame was built on a bed of kiln dried sand, which was laid on a damp proof membrane. Kingspan thermal insulation boards were installed within the frame, and then covered by OSB sheets. There is a small gap all the way around the floor, so it is decoupled from the walls, and hopefully the sand will provide some isolation to the concrete floor.

New Walls

The new walls will be built using 50mm stud, fitted 10mm clear of the block wall. The base will be fixed to the floor using acoustic hangers (thanks for the idea @peter-d-w ), with 10mm x50mm acoustic tape sandwiched in between for good measure. The top board will be fixed to the ceiling joists in the same manner. I don't know how effective this will be (if at all), but adding some rubber between the contact points can't hurt.

50mm Rockwool RW3 acoustic insulation slabs will be wedged between the stud work, and resilient channel bars fitted horizontally across the stud. I would have preferred to use Genie Clips and furring channel, but just didn't have enough width to accommodate them.

Two layers of 12.5mm acoustic plasterboard will then be fixed to the resilient channel, with Green Glue in between. Again, I would have preferred to to use 15mm or even 19mm boards, but that would have taken up too much valuable space.


Ceiling

The joists go across the width of the room, and are about 350-360mm apart and 200mm deep. The new playroom is directly above (two thirds of the length), with OSB floor boards separating the two rooms. The front third of the ceiling has a pitched roof above it, and you can see the felt above the thermal insulation.

I'll use 100mm Rockwool RW3 acoustic insulation slabs between the joists, and run resilient channel bars across the length of the room.

I will also fit two layers of acoustic plasterboard to the resilient channel , but I'm tempted to use 19mm boards for the first layer, and 12.5mm for the second layer. Not sure if using the thicker boards will provide any benefit though?

Here is a GIF animation of the construction -

Room.gif
 
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Here are some images of what the room will roughly look like once complete. I need to add the soffit that will house the cables and downlights, as well as the pelmet that will hide the projector screen case. I'll upload new images once done.

Rear View

Rear View 2.png


Top View

Top View 2.png

You may have noticed that there are six ceiling speakers (ignore that they are not exactly inline - still figuring out Sketchup!), and I'll explain why in a later post.
 
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Oh love a build thread I’ll be following closely
 
Suscribed
 
It only takes a few pics of some ripped up plasterboard and we're in... :D
If I'd have known that, I would have taken photos of the 45 rubble bags I managed to fill!

As a side note.. I had the choice of two plasterboard skips at £200 each, or several trips to the local tip using multiple inert waste permits (supposedly limited to 10 bags each @ one per household per year), which do you think I chose?!

Clue - the one requiring the most effort
 
It only takes a few pics of some ripped up plasterboard and we're in... :D

I'm in!

As a side note.. I had the choice of two plasterboard skips at £200 each, or several trips to the local tip using multiple inert waste permits (supposedly limited to 10 bags each @ one per household per year), which do you think I chose?!

When we started our demo/re-construction, I bought a 2nd hand trailer off eBay, purely to take cr@p/plasterboard to the tip.

Two weeks after buying the trailer Tynedale council announced a chargeable permit scheme for trailers, and on top of that, fees for plasterboard disposal. It was going to cost me £20+ per journey to the tip!!

County Durham, our neighbouring county, has free plasterboard disposal (trailers still not allowed), so I ended up making several 30 mile round trips with the car filled with broken plasterboard, floor to roof! Took me several hours to clean the car afterwards - but saved me a similar amount to you. I sold the trailer on eBay again, having never used it!

If I'd known people were interested in broken up plasterboard I'd have included it in my own build thread!:D
 
^^ Unlucky @The Dreamer !!

Lancashire county council introduced permits for trailers and vans a while back - a bit annoying as my neighbour has a long wheel base van for his carpet fitting business. In the end I used three different small cars to lug the rubble bags to the tip. Fortunately the guys who worked there let me take 15 bags a time on a single permit that was limited to 10 bags. The council levy a charge of about £3.50 per bag over the allowance, which would still have been cheaper than hiring the skip, but the guys at the tip let me off the charge as well, so all good.

As I used the bags and a large plastic sheet, there was hardly any dust left behind - at least nothing a quick 5 minute vacuum didn't get rid of :smashin:
 
As I used the bags and a large plastic sheet, there was hardly any dust left behind - at least nothing a quick 5 minute vacuum didn't get rid of :smashin:

Yes, I sort of skipped that bit - figuring a little bit of dust never hurt anyone!

After my first trip, the car was so filthy inside I didn't bother trying to clean it until the job was completed! Ground in plaster dust certainly took me a lot longer than 5 minutes to clean up! :rolleyes: Oh well, live and learn! - though you'd think that someone in their mid-fifties might have already learnt enough to avoid a school-boy error like that!:facepalm:
 
Really looking forward to seeing this come together. You might yet convince me to stick a shed in the back yard for a workshop and convert the garage!
 
So whilst the plasterboard was ripped off the walls back in July, work didn't really start on rebuilding the room until the 21st October.

First job was to build the 50mm stud frame, so took a trip to the local B&Q and picked up five 6-packs of 50mm x 47mm x 2400mm rough sawn timber. The advertised price was £22 per pack, but this dropped to £15.73 at the till, happy days :smashin:

We managed to get two and a half walls done on the first day, but had to finish at 3pm for other commitments.

211017.jpg
You would like to think that the walls on an 18 year old house were plum, but no, they are pretty much all a few mm out. Obviously the stud work is level all way round, but this will eat in to the width it a little.

I mentioned using Acoustic Hangers and Acoustic Tape as a means of providing additional isolation from the existing floor and ceiling joists -

20171021_160350.jpg

You can't tell from this photo, but there is a 10mm gap between the timber and the brick.

Have updated the first few posts as well.
 
Nothing more done until the 28th October, but we managed to complete the stud frame, fit the rockwool and start attaching the resilient channel.

Only leaving a 10mm gap between the wall and stud has made working round the gas and water pipes tricky.

Pipework.jpg

Fortunately there are plenty of spare Acoustic Hangers to support those floating studs!

Two walls done, two plus the ceiling to go.

20171028_143103.jpg


Won't get much done over the next week or so as busy with work (am in the process of setting up a new IT services business), and kids are off school on half-term this week too so will be out on a few trips etc.

I'll finish the other two walls and ceiling, all ready for the plasterboard going on around the middle of November.
 
I have a similar situation with a gas pipe running the length of the garage (though a bit higher up). Is there anything you're supposed to do when burying that sort of thing to protect from future drill related mishaps?
 
I have a similar situation with a gas pipe running the length of the garage (though a bit higher up). Is there anything you're supposed to do when burying that sort of thing to protect from future drill related mishaps?
Nothing specific that I know of, other than recording where they are on a diagram and / or photo. Certainly the builders that did the original conversion didn't do anything.

I had a wall taken down between the kitchen and dining room to create an open plan space a few years back, and the electrical cable was hidden behind a thin steel channel. It didn't do much good though as whoever fitted the kitchen wall cupboards put a screw right through it and in to the cable. Luckily I used a rubber handled screwdriver when I undid the screw to take down the cupboard, as I might not have been here to write this otherwise!

More worryingly was that the same guy just missed the gas pipe feeding the hob by millimeters.
 
Luckily I used a rubber handled screwdriver when I undid the screw to take down the cupboard, as I might not have been here to write this otherwise!

Crikey! Reminds me of my first attempt at DIY, except it was entirely my fault; took a wall down and was making good around the opening - nailing a piece of wood into the frame when a large flash and bang, and all the lights went out. I was using a metal hammer - thankfully it had a rubber handle and my hand was clear of the metal. Frightened the sh!t out me though!:blush:
 
Crikey! Reminds me of my first attempt at DIY, except it was entirely my fault; took a wall down and was making good around the opening - nailing a piece of wood into the frame when a large flash and bang, and all the lights went out. I was using a metal hammer - thankfully it had a rubber handle and my hand was clear of the metal. Frightened the sh!t out me though!:blush:
That was lucky!

What I don't understand is how the kitchen fitter didn't kill himself, unless the electric supply hadn't been turned on at that point as it was a new build. Just goes to show that there are hidden dangers even when the so called professional tradesman are doing the work.
 

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