my home theater pics

I realize this is a car forum, but I figured some of you may like to see this.  I definately spent much more time on it then any car I've ever worked on!

After two long years of working in my basement I can finally sit back and enjoy my new home theater system.

Specs:

A little background about the room - back when my wife and I first started talking about finishing our ~1000 sq ft basement I told her I wanted a theater room.  She wanted a rec room.  We compromised with her telling me I could have a theater only if it took up zero floor space.  Fortunately for me, my wife wasn't aware of projectors, in wall speakers, and my overall creativity!

The main room itself is awkwardly sized at 13' wide and 30' deep.  The depth gave me the ability to go big and this worked well with the zero floor space as projectors don't need stands.  I knew I wanted to cut the room roughly in half so I calculated the biggest screen that I could fit on the wall and then how far back the main seating had to be from it.  This allowed me to place a half wall right behind the couch (main seating area) to properly divide the room.  On the back of the half wall is a small 12" by 9' formica bar height counter top with 4 bar stools for drinks and food.

To keep the speakers off the floor I placed all 7 off them in walls.  The two main front speakers are in custom built in wall enclosures and sound great.  The other 5 are all free air and are sufficient for what they are.  I cheated on the sub as there was no way to get it in a wall and have it sound good.  My wife let me slide because the corner it is sitting in was left wide open and the sub was something I already had and didn't have to buy.

Next, to keep the equipment off the floor I built an enclosure in the wall under the stairs.  I had some dark tinted glass cut for a door and basically you can't see anything in there besides the display of the reciever - it looks really cool.  The best part about this setup is that there is a pocket door to get in to the area under the steps and from there you can wire and rewire every part of the system.  NOTHING has to be pulled out to connect or disconnect.

In all there are 15 can lights that are currently controlled by a custom designed dimmer system.  Each of the two zones has 3 input switches strategically placed around the room.  Whichever switch was last used is the "active" switch and that switch determines the brighness of the lights (about 125 steps from off to on).  The 25A dimmer moduels are located in a large junction box that contains ALL the wiring for the basement (and only the basement).  Above the junction box is a subpanel dedicated to the basement.  The point behind the junction box is so that I can easily add an automation system if I decide to (or create one).  We went a little excessive on the wiring as almost all recepticals have dedicated wires.

All and all, after 2 years of messing around with it, it's great to sit down and enjoy the new space with my wife and 1yr old daugther.  I still have a little to do down there but it's pretty much smooth sailing from here.  So far I've done all the work myself in my spare time (I have a full time job) with the exception of finishing the drywall, installing the drop ceiling, laying the carpet and saw cutting my poured concrete foundation to add an egress window (there are pictures of that whole project on my facebook).  It's been a great learning experiance and is very rewarding to sit in a room that you did most of the work in!

All the cans are 120vac but all the switches are 5vdc.  For the most part, there are two lighting zones in the basement - the front zone and the back zone.  There are 6 cans on the front and 7 on back.  Each zone has 3 switches associated with it and you can precisely dim the zone from any of the 3 switches (the controller acts like the last switched used is the only switch in the system).

The HDMI cable is 25' and I don't remember the cost - I bought it at Monoprice.com.

Thanks for the compliments!

thats a great idea for the subs - I never thought about that.

Hopefully the 1 powered 12" sub will be enough.  Fingers crossed!