Home Cinema Construction Project

Movie Room Construction

Background

Just a bit of background. We bought an 19th century timber "Queenslander" in reasonably original condition, with the typical old style mods (eg verandas all enclosed, cladding added etc) about 24 years ago, with the intent of renovating and raising and building in underneath. I've always been a movie buff, so was always intending on building a movie room. I just new I had to wait.

About 13-14 years ago, we had the major construction work done, the house raised, extended a little out the back, and built in underneath. With the plans, we set aside a room with the intent of it being the movie room. I even had the foresight enough to put a powerpoint in the ceiling for a projector. Well, due to throw length of the projector I ended up getting, I never ended up using it, but that is another story. But at any rate, I was thinking ahead...

In the intervening years, technology improved (to the point a few years ago I thought I'd be able to buy a nice 75" OLED finally. But the manufacturers decided to drop 3D, so that left me with just projectors. Our lounge room viewing equipment changed over the years, but we'd stuck with a 2.0 then 2.1 setup (I didn't really want to clutter the room with rear speakers). And I was busy on other projects. The major construction covered the structural and certification related work, but I did the most of the finishing with various projects in the ensuing years. Eg, stripping back to timber both the exterior and exterior timber, and repainting, and sanding and polishing the floors, and building my wife Julia's craft room (which is next to the movie room), upstairs study, and then the kitchen remod (which we had a company do, but then the finishing painting and flooring was my work. Then, when that was all done, the last step was the movie room. So last September I made a start. Both in construction, and research in earnest.

And a bit of background on myself. I'm by profession an IT developer, but I've always since childhood worked on various physical "hobbies" from cars to carpentry of sorts. I'm not a trained professional. So some of my naming of construction related things is probably wrong...

A link to the photo album with larger sized photos is available here.

Framing

The first part of the job (after clearing 10 years of junk out of the room, a job in itself), was clearing up the framing. When the house was raised, there were a number of steel C beams added and bolted to the original hardwood beams.These needed to be framed around for plastering, and to level it and keep it neat.

In addition, after my research, I actually decided that for the ceiling speakers, I would use surface bracket mounted bookshelf speakers. Was it the best idea? I don't know. I like the results, and I understood that a good portion of how good speakers are is the cabinet design and construction. So sticking speakers into an insulated ceiling cavity, even if you build a box around it to give it some air, just didn't gel for me.

And the flooring. When I did Julia's craft room, I did a hardwood over thick builders ply flooring. It worked well, and looked great. Just after we'd bought the house, we bought a good quantity of antique ironbark flooring from one of the Newstead woolstores, with the intent on using it on a kitchen. That is another story, but in short, I built part of the kitchen (basically one U shaped main ground cabinets and benchtops sink etc), but never finished it. I had a lot more energy back then, but it was built on the 19th century closed kitchen floorplan, and was just too dark. When we had the major renovations done, we removed the wall to leave it open plan, with the plan of having it all redone. Which we finally did. Anyhow, I had a lot of antique hardwood flooring left over. It looked fantastic in Julia's room, so I decided to use it in the movie room also. I know acoustically people say carpet, but I went with my heart. I love the look and feel of timber.

Anyhow, before getting the plastering done, I laid down the ply. Basically you just spread sikka adhesive on the concrete, and lay the sheets on it in a checker pattern. I was lucky due to the room size (roughly 3.6m x 4.8m) it was exactly 6 sheets. So just one cut...

At this stage also I put all the speaker wiring in the walls for surrounds and ceiling, and had the powerpoints I decided I needed put in.

Insulation

The next stage was insulating the room. I didn't go all out, just got thick nylon insulation. My skin is irritated by all the harsh fiber type insulations, so I would not use them.

Plastering

Plastering was a job I paid a professional to do. It isn't a one person job, and it is something I have no skill in... We used 16mm firex, for the added acoustic properties.

Plaster Sealing

Once the plastering was done, I just quickly painted it all to seal it. Nothing major involved here... But the room was starting finally to look like a room.

The Flooring

Now this is actually a pretty hard job, technically and physically. This wasn't the first room I'd done with it, so I knew what I was in for. Antique Ironback flooring from a woolstore is rough. Very rough. And thick, an inch/25mm. And heavy. This stuff will actually sink. It is denser than water. And irregular. Curvature of the boards meant in a lot of cases you needed to bend them into place, and in some cases shave the tongue to get them to slot in. For most of the long lengths I did end up scoring the underside of the boards about 1/3 to half way though the thickness to aid flexing it.

So basically I would screw in stops to the floor and use reversed pipe clamps and compress the boards into place, and nail them in. Generally speaking I reused the original nail holes, plus secret nailed (diagonally from the front along the tongue so not visible when joined) where required, especially to prevent movement. The secret nailing is actually hard with this timber. It is dense beyond belief, and hard, so you can NOT just hammer a nail into it EVER. If you try, there are two outcomes. The most common outcome is the nail bends. The less likely outcome is the timber splits. So you have to drill rebated holes. The type of nails I used was griplock nails, the ones that are ribbed. Basically they are rough so the shaft grips into the ply really well.

Note the masking tape on the wall... I was trying to figure out what size screen I would get. I was still heavily researching during this.

The final cut... I bevel hand-cut the last pieces that had to slot in against the wall and curve into the entrance doorway. Japanese handsaws are just great. I honestly hate loud noise, so I really try limit powertool usage. Yes, I did relent and crosscut the ironbark lengths with a drop saw, and sand with a power sander, but everything else I cut and plane by hand.

Floor Finishing

First up was the cleanup and puttying. This fills in all the original, reused nail holes and some other gaps filled. A job in itself...

After this, then was the leveling and sanding. The flooring is irregular, and the timber very hard and dense, so getting a level floor just by sanding it is just impossible. I didn't really get any good action photos, but basically I used an ancient hand plane in spots to get the boards to meet up. This was a gradual process where you do sanding, and then shave, so more sanding etc. I have to say that Festo orbital sander and extracter has been worth every cent I paid for the work I've done with it. Just brilliant. For the main rough sanding I used 16 grit sheets, and must have burnt though about 12 of them. They don't stay too rough that long on this stuff.

Tombo, one of our cats, finally comes to investigate once the noise stopped... Miss you buddy :(

During all this, I had of course been researching equipment, and purchasing gear as I made a decision and found a good price.

Angel, investigating the speakers....

Trims and Doors

Once the flooring was done, I put in the skirting boards and architraves, and installed the bi-fold door to the under-stair cupboard. They are a pretty tricky sort of door to install. It was also made a bit trickier sorting door jambs and architraves as 16mm firex is 6mm thicker than standard plasterboard, so all jambs are made for 10mm wall sheeting.

Shelving

The next phase was shelving. This was actually an organic process from need to design. I knew from projector throw distance and screen size, the projector would have to be mounted on a shelf on the back wall. And I needed a shelf as low as possible above the door (for lens shift reasons), and about 500mm wide for the projector. I also had the asymmetry issue of the ceiling with the boxed in beams, as seen in the above picture. I also knew what other antique timber I had in the garage. I had a good quantity of hoop pine flooring that had been removed from the previously enclosed front veranda (during the major renovations). I made a rough measure of what I had and figured what I could do. I also had this antique piece of 220mm pine skirting board with a bullnose profile that I could use for the wider section for the projector. To minimize height, the shelf above the door and side panels are flush with the jambs - doweled into them. This also sorted the 6mm discrepency with the thicker plaster.

So given these constraints, a plan started coming to mind, and I started drawing it up on paper, first rough sketches and then designs.

The timber was all painted, so before cutting, the boards were all sanded outside.

This was all pine, so back to all hand cutting too... Less waste, and quieter. You can see my Nobex miter saw in the first picture. Something I've put to so much use over the years...

Now this is another piece of good luck. I had no intentions on this up front, but remember the kitchen I discussed building back in the intro? Well when we had the kitchen redone, I kept all of the timber and benches I'd made when I dismantled it. It was a great (and heavy) solid 1" thick biscuit and epoxy joined timber.The breakfast bar was EXACTLY the right length to fit between the door frame and wall. I had no intentions on this, but I had the bench, so I decided to put it in, and make this my new home office desk. I'm writing this from it, right now.

The length was right, but you can see in the left of the picture that there is a notch taken out. This was a hand cut I did so it would slot into the side panel frame that will sit there.

The plans... To the right of the door I built bookshelves, and display shelves above the desk.

I live by the measure thrice, cut once mindset...

Winter, out third cat, investigating my work...

Construction of the unit in progress.

Notice the brackets? There are none. The side panels were screwed to the underlying studs and noggins behind the plaster. The side panels are all notched out to fit the shelves, so they slide in. And the shelves are all doweled along their lengths to the studs behind the plaster (so whatever the standard stud spacing is, each 450mm?).

For the book / display shelves, there are two widths of the 6" flooring. The side panels around the door are three widths, with the third one to support the extension for the projector.

Getting levels. And note door panels flush with the jamb.

This is where I fit the projector shelf entension, the 230mm wide piece. Note the power point and cable cover. I put ducting through the ceiling so I could pull the network and HDMI cables through more or less hidden.

Stage 1 all done now...

Stage 1? So there is stage 2? Yes. I wanted to build in under the beam on the left for blu-ray shelving. I had the timber left and then got busy on these. There were a lot simpler.

Angel investigating...

"What the heck is this!? I'm out of here!"

"Look ma, no brackets!"

Shelving all done... 

Now to oil it. I wanted a nice flat natural finish so I used tung oil.

I was pretty pleased with the result.

Painting

Now on to painting. Not a fun job. I wanted something dark and flat, but not ridiculously dark. I'd planned on a deep purple, as I thought it'd match nicely with the timber. I also ordered the recliners in dark cherry. And I had a nice purple decoration I wanted to use in the room.

Equipment Installation

Next, the equipment installation. Kef Q100s for ceiling.

Q900s. I've oscillated back and forth between having the second pair of 900s side or rear. They are currently side. Last night they were rear...

I build an acoustic / blackout panel to sit in the window frame for when the screen is down.

Now, this is another story with a long history. Soon after Julia and I were married, back in '91, we bought this piece of Queensland Red Cedar. It is basically an extinct timber that was forrested out in colonial times as it was so hardy and light. A beautiful piece of wood, about 40mm thick, but so light. Anyhow, I wanted to use it, we just want sure how. I decided I'd use it for the center speaker shelf. 

This all grew organically as I went along, from my initial idea, to how it turned out. When I started this, I only had the one SVS subwoofer, and was just sitting it on posts with center speaker on top, AV gear underneath.

While I was working on this, someone local to me on a forum listed one for sale, and it all fell together. I built another mini shelf from the hoop pine on the underside to house the center.

Screen and Air Conditioner

I'm no fan of air conditioning, but being as it will be viewed with the window blocked, I relented an installed an air conditioner in the room.

For the screen, I got a Screen Technics Chain Drive 110". Note the HDMI and network cable running up the wall. Not the most elegant, but just I could not duct a hidden path in this section of wall that I'd have a chance in heck of pulling a cable through. So this was the compromise...

The Projector

A Sony VPL-VW550ES. Got it at a good price from a Sony service agent. Plus a lot of my trinkets on display...

Angel is our most curious and agile cat, and managed to jump up and investigate the projector...

The Quilt

This was just another project I did when I was young, and had more time and energy. I did it back in 91/92. And it has been sitting packed away since. It was based on one of the Hoffman Jimi Hendrix pictures. I look back and have no idea what got into me, or how I did it. But I recall Julia's grandmother was into quilting and talking about it, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Other room decorations are animation cels from Beavis and Butthead...

It may all seem gauche, but it is my room, my stuff, and I like it...

My one regret was lack of wall space. I have a vintage unused 3 sheet Dirty Harry Magnum Force movie poster I just have no room to display. I need a home for it...

The Seating

The seating finally arrived. So all done. They weren't as dark as I was expecting, more a (fitting) Purple Haze rather than the advertised Black Cherry. But it all fits, and with the lights on, the room is bright enough. And with the lights off, all nice and dark.