Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Lets plan a theater space

Yes, drywall and insulation was much cheaper through a supplier vs HD. A 5/8" sheet was 10$ vs 17$. Just decided to do the whole basement in 5/8 after finding out my budget based on HD prices just opened up a bit. Bonus!

Nick you must have 2000sq feet or so? Sounds like a big basement with all that sheetrock. I've seen a crew in action with those carts and it is amazing how quick they are. Hard working fellas.

Yeah, it is about 1700sqft finished, but when you add about 7 or 8 additional walls besides just the outside to make rooms, and add double layer drywall in the home theater, it uses more. But, very good in your estimate.

Channel up!

Walls actually drywalled. Waiting for a pic once ceiling is finished. Holy cow. Already getting creepy quiet....

My room was creepy quiet with the insulation exposed, and then became the most echoing room I've ever heard when the double drywall went up.

That's OK, once you're finished putting insulation and drywall up, you go buy more insulation and start making acoustic panels.

There is something to be said for stopping when 2/3 of the drywall is up.

True enough, at the 3/4 walls drywalled mark the room actually sounded not too bad. With only 2 walls up the room had a noticable "boing" ring to it. Kinda fun to clap and boing while we worked. All the walls are up and screwed every 8 inches or so to the resilient channel. This stuff is cool. The walls literally float off the studs.



To cut down on the chances of shorting out the channel, thus ruining the sound decoupling, we made up a handy little jig and marked the floor with felt where the studs were. Then we just laid the template between studs and screwed on either side. This was my sunday. Going around the room and earning a drill blister.



This is where things stand after a weekend of work. The walls are channeled and boarded and the ceiling is ready with channel. We put up a sheet of drywall over the door opening just for fun to see just how quiet it got. The furnace, UPS and HRV running 20ft outside the door were completely gone. My wife was yelling from the top of the stairs to help come unload groceries and we couldn't hear her. Awesome.

Another weekend of progress. Ready for seam filling. Scheduled for Wednesday for a quote. Hope he likes filling screw holes..... somewhere between 3-4000 used. If its a go I will be ready for primer in a week or so hopefully. Moving right along. I have to start worrying about picking cabinetry and tiles now for the concession area outside of the theater. Booo! Not a fun task when you want to hoard the entire budget for the inside of the room. Here is the inside of the room.

2 Layers of 5/8" on ceiling and one layer on walls. The perimeter of the room between layers on ceiling was caulked along with as many seams as I could before I ran out of the 7 tubes of silicone. I made sure the front half of the room was priority and went from there. We marked out the studs and channel and snapped chalk lines on the ceiling to aid in hitting the right spots and avoiding the studs. Where did the fancy speaker boxes go?!



Here is the outside of room where the cabinetry will live soon. I have to decide on building them from scratch or buying something that is able to hold a rack or sturdy shelving for the AV cabinet side of things.



Here is a pic of the plan. Following pretty closely still. I have decided to locate the beer fridge in the lower part of the AV cabinet side and just leave 36" or so of cupboard for all the gear. I have an AVR, 2 power amps and some networking hardware to jam into it. Should be OK. Looking into the "cooler guys" product line to aid in the cooling of the cupboard while the doors remain closed. This gear cupboard will not be accessible to theater users when I'm not around. It will simply be the hidden technical side of how the theater will operate. Thank goodness for the easy harmony macros.

I am thinking of extending across from the top of the AV cabinet to the right to meet up with the ductwork bulkhead with some sort of embellished molding. I figure I can add a valence light in there to aid in dim lighting while guests are over for grabbing snacks or running to the restroom. Plus, it will add that wow appeal that makes it seem more elaborate than it really is.

I may have missed this in your posts, but did you stagger the drywall joints to eliminate joint over joint on your double layers?

Jeeez, Mike. He was feeling good about all the progress and now he has to rip it all down and start again?

Yes, they are staggered. In a perfect world I should have ran them perpendicular as well. But that would have added more seams kind of negating any benefit. Catch 22. To be honest the ceiling was way easier than the walls. All of the plugs, sconces, speaker terminal boxes and conduit chases made for a full day of messing around last weekend. I'm very lucky to have someone on board who is handy with pretty much all aspects of construction. I have more respect for the guys who hang drywall everyday. Awkward work for sure on ceilings.