Making the right Room Choice

Although the room its self is completed today (not the theater) I will spend some time telling you about the design. Some of the criteria of our choosing the floor plan of the home was it had to have an office, a large enough garage to park my truck and my wife’s car, and a room large enough for a home theater at least 20x14. That’s it everything else was negotiable. So after much debate we landed on the Derbyville form Donald gardener (http://www.dongardner.com/plan_details.aspx?pid=2799). The plan was a close match to our specifications but not quite. The garage wasn’t quite large enough to fit my truck and the bonus room was not conducive to a home theater at all. But with the help of my good friend and structural engineer Tommy Harris we made some slight modifications to the garage size which in turn made the bonus room larger. Then one small tweak on the dormer and now we have a room worthy enough to call a home theater.

You will see in the before and after pictures of the plan change we were able to modify both the garage and the bonus room with little effect to the outside appearance of the home. One unplanned bonus to the change of this room was we ended up with a rather large attic space on the left side of the room, once we started framing the home I saw the potential of that attic space to become a great room for a library to house our ever growing movie collection. It could also double as access to the rear of the whole house media rack to be discussed in later blogs. So I decided to go ahead and finish that space and utilize it.

Before: The original bonus room The shape of the room is not very conducive for acoustics or screen placement

After: The Modified Home Theater The room now has a rectangular shape with 9' ceilings.We also put in a fake wall to hide the windows and black out the room. This helps with projector viewing and gives us a place to hang the screen. We can also use the attic space behind the wall to hide speakers if we choose to do so. Since the room is climate controlled we dont have to worry about speaker damage from the heat and cold.

Why do a blog?

Being that I own a company that installs and sells among many other things home theaters equipment and systems. I often get asked the same questions about costs, equipment, LCD Vs. Plasma, Projector or Flat Panel, Speaker types, universal remotes and the list goes on and on. So I factored these common questions in with the fact that last year my wife and I were building our own home, and if there is one thing my wife and I have in common it’s we love to watch movies. Therefore, I decided to create a blog about my very own project and the experiences and thought processes I went through and what factored into my decisions on creating my theater to our own expectation.
Now, in this blog you will not find me talking about and reviewing the elite components designed for people with unlimited budgets. You will find a high level of quality in the equipment I choose but I will not spend a fortune on this system. Also this home theater is currently a work in progress and will take quite some time to complete. So please check back often for new news and pictures on the Evolution of My Home Theater.