 Filed Under: Casual $$ Reader Interiors Posted Mon Feb 4, 2008, 5:04 PM ET — By Ray Coronado
We wired the room, installed the equipment, and calibrated the system ourselves—and we couldn't be prouder. My home theater desire started in 1994 when I went to a friend's home theater to watch Jurassic Park on laserdisc. All I could say that day was, "Wow. . .that was amazing." For the next 10 years, my living room was my theater, but my wife suggested that we do a room addition to the house and make it my dedicated home theater. I was all in favor. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Casual Posted Mon Jan 21, 2008, 12:44 PM ET — By Russ Klass
How I got a great basement home theater—without breaking the bank. I love to read about the great, inspirational dedicated theaters in the pages of Audio Video Interiors magazine. However, not everyone, including myself, can afford these sometimes expensive theaters. I thought AVI readers might like to see what a determined homeowner could do on a modest budget. We built our theater for the primary users, our three-person family, but we can add extra seating as needed. Filed Under: $ Reader Interiors Casual Posted Fri Jan 4, 2008, 11:26 AM ET — By Robert Barbiero
The Robelle: my labor of love. The dream of one day having a movie theater in my home was born in the summer of 1976. I was impressed by my friend Brian's dad's theater. It had a dozen or so of those old wooden seats that you'd find in a school auditorium. It had a separate projection booth for the Bell & Howell 16mm projector, and it had an actual stage, with speakers built into the walls. Filed Under: Casual Reader Interiors $ Posted Fri Dec 14, 2007, 12:03 PM ET — By Ron Wiechmann
How to start from scratch and achieve glory. The seeds for our home theater were planted in the mid-1980s, when the sun would shine through the curtains and put an incessant glare on the TV. I said on many occasions, "When I have a home built, I will have a TV room in the basement with no windows." In 1994, the idea of a home theater sprouted after I went to a home show in the Dayton, Ohio, area and saw a home theater with tiered seating, a 104-inch screen, a front projector, and a laserdisc player. As the idea grew, I was able to design the right-size room into the plans for our new home. Filed Under: Casual $$ Reader Interiors Posted Wed Nov 14, 2007, 2:43 AM ET — By Joe Klusnick
For my first true home theater, I didn't mess around. The first two homes my family and I lived in suffered from the shortcoming of not having a dedicated space for our home theater, so the TV-based systems with huge tower speakers dominated the family rooms. When it came time to search for our third home, my wife and I made sure to find one with a space for me to practice my hobby. Filed Under: Reader Interiors Traditional $$ Posted Mon Nov 5, 2007, 4:15 PM ET — By Bill Yung
A reader finds home theater inspiration in his first theater, giving him the craving to upgrade. As is the case for many others, the motivation for our theater was our previous theater, which was barely 12 feet by 14 feet with a ceiling less than 8 feet high. While constricted by the physical dimensions of the space, this theater was enough to get me hooked on the idea of owning a home theater and brought to light the many possible shortcomings and pitfalls of building one. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Posted Thu Oct 25, 2007, 12:11 PM ET — By Neil Chatani
This humble installation shows how far you can go with a little craftiness and some hand tools. Like any loyal Home Theater magazine reader, I've spent hours drooling over the kind of six-figure, floor-to-ceiling home theater installations that put many commercial movie theaters to shame. Such ultra-high-end equipment and installations are wonderful eye candy—and something to aspire to—but, for a 20-year-old college student, a more modest installation can still be a real treat. That's why this past Christmas, instead of getting my parents a store-bought gift, I designed and built this custom home theater installation in the family room of our house in Portland, Oregon. And the total cost was less than $4,500! Filed Under: $$ Reader Interiors Traditional Posted Mon Oct 22, 2007, 2:37 PM ET — By Ruben Ortiz
This homeowner takes DIY to another level. I fell in love with movie theaters after my first outing—to see Star Wars as a kid in the '70s. Since then, the moviegoing experience has fascinated me every time. Ten years ago, my wife and I purchased our first house. Not knowing much about home theaters, we built a modest movie theater. Because of the odd shape of that particular home, a professional installation was not going to work. Consequently, we settled for a projector and a wall with some theater decorations. Filed Under: $$ Reader Interiors Traditional Posted Wed Oct 3, 2007, 1:11 PM ET — By Grant and Cathy Ovsak
How we transformed our room from Brady Bunch shag to old-Hollywood glamour. Eight years ago, we were in the market for a home that was a little outdated but in a good school district. The home we wound up buying included a "party room" that had been featured in a well-known home-decorating magazine. "Wow, this one might have potential," we thought. Filed Under: Casual $$ Reader Interiors Posted Sun Sep 23, 2007, 3:19 PM ET — By Brad Wescott
Her style, his performance—in a room they can both enjoy. Welcome to the ultimate his-and-her home theater. This home theater and family room was a labor of love that my wife and I designed and constructed. We did all the wiring, electrical setup, lighting, texturing, drywalling, painting, and flooring. The room measures 16 by 23 by 18 feet and is painted a flat latex chamois. The rear of the room opens to the kitchen where my wife can cook, entertain, and watch a movie all at the same time. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $$ Casual Posted Mon Sep 3, 2007, 8:04 PM ET — By Doug Christianson
An electrical background and a passion for gear garnered this reader a great DIY theater. The process of building the DJ Theater began in 1995, the year when Dolby Digital was made available to the public in various receivers. Prior to this time, hobbyists like me had no need for a dedicated theater room due to the simple system requirements of Dolby Pro Logic. With the emergence of Dolby Digital, a dedicated room seemed appropriate. The only question that now remained was: How does a person build a theater room to accommodate unknown future needs at a reasonable cost? Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Contemporary Posted Fri Aug 31, 2007, 11:43 AM ET — By James Reedy
How I turned my passion for audio into my own theater. Ever since I can remember, I've always had a passion for music, and I've since become an audio enthusiast. When I was 12, my next-door neighbor introduced me to his Fisher stereo system. Then, several years later, I befriended another neighbor who used to work at a local radio station and had hundreds of records and 12-inch singles, as well as a high-end audio system. From there, it has been a constant hobby of mine. My desire for having a dedicated room for audio and video started when I met someone who'd built a dedicated home theater in his house. I bought my first home in 2002, and the work was set to begin. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Casual Posted Wed Aug 29, 2007, 2:08 AM ET — By Steve Barnard
How I did my homework and saved. When we moved into our first home a few years ago, I couldn't wait to get started finishing the basement. I told my wife I would wait a while before starting, but I was so excited that I could only hold out for a few weeks. The space is approximately 1,800 square feet, so I had plenty of room to let my imagination run. There were several things we wanted to put down there, like a workout room and a billiard room, but the one thing that really excited me was a dedicated home theater. I have been an avid reader of Audio Video Interiors for the past several years, so I had plenty of ideas about the experience I wanted to create. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $$ Traditional Posted Wed Aug 29, 2007, 2:00 AM ET — By Charles Bloom
Everything I needed was online. For several years, my wife and I talked about buying or building a new house in Pinecrest, Florida, near the house that I grew up in. As luck would have it, the house next door to the one I grew up in came up for sale at a very reasonable price, so we purchased it, tore it down, and began planning our new home. I knew from the start that a dedicated home theater would be included, but I had no experience in designing or building one. Fortunately, there is a universe of information available on the Internet. I found a fantastic resource, www.avsforum.com, where a mixture of amateurs and professionals share their audio/video/theater-building expertise free of charge. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $$ Casual Posted Wed Aug 29, 2007, 1:37 AM ET — By James Robinson
From 30,000 feet to reality. So, when was the first time you heard the term home theater? For me, it was at about 30,000 feet. I was on my way back home from another business trip when I noticed a magazine left in the seat pocket in front of me. Curiosity got the best of me, and, before I knew it, I was flipping through page after page and getting more and more immersed in this amazing new world. Then there was that one thing that changed everything—I was reading an article, and there it was—the exact LCD projector I had been carrying with me all those months for boring business presentations (the NEC LT155). Someone was using it in a home theater installation. Could it be? I anxiously drove home and plugged my projector into my living-room DVD player, and voila! There it was, a glorious projected image on my living-room wall that was bigger than any TV I had ever seen or imagined. The DVD I was playing was so clear, and the image was bright and beautiful. Filed Under: Reader Interiors Casual $$ Staff Picks Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007, 5:22 PM ET — By Tony Reimer
Although it took a total of two years and six months of hard work, an equity line is what really helped me finish my theater. Home Theater magazine, Audio Video Interiors, and the Internet were my main sources of information. The room's dimensions are 13.5 by 19 by 8.33 feet, with a closet in the rear that houses the component rack. I gutted the room to the studs, even the ceiling, and installed a dedicated power circuit for audio, video, and lighting. I ran all the wiring for low voltage in the crawl space and for high voltage in the attic. Some crossing was unavoidable, but, at 90-degree angles, I've had no problems. To begin color selection, I started with the ceiling. I simulated the night sky with Ralph Lauren flat paint in magistrate black. I took a paint chip with me to the garment district in L.A. and found curtain fabric. With those colors to work with, I picked out the wall and trim paint and the carpet to match. I already had the black leather furniture. Filed Under: Reader Interiors Casual $$ Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007, 4:58 PM ET — By Glenn Mosby
Having lived in our home since 1979, we are the third owners of this tiny 750-square-foot, 1.5 story, 1943 frame bungalow. In 1998 we decided on some major interior and exterior modifications, which I designed and we had done. The exterior changes gave the house a fresh, neomodern look without spoiling the home's original character lines, allowing it to still fit in with our neighborhood. The interior changes opened up our main floor plan. I have since caught the carpentry bug and now design and do my own work. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Casual Staff Picks Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007, 4:54 PM ET — By Dave Curlee
The Beginning
Filed Under: Reader Interiors $$ Casual Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007, 4:52 PM ET — By Kirk Bluth, Homeowner
My interest in home theaters stems from my father. Like anyone brought up by a good father, I wish to be like him and take interest in things that he finds interesting. One hobby of his is audio/video stuff. Several years ago, he turned a little-used living room in the basement of his home into a home theater. He had professional installers do the work, and I was amazed at the results: a drop-down tensioned screen, an HDTV projector, and top-quality picture and sound. I wanted to have a home theater, too. In the middle of my Air Force service at Hill AFB, Utah, my family and I decided to build a home. I had plans to build a dedicated home theater under the garage. Financial issues, including medical-school loans, a family of seven to feed, and limited military income caused these plans to end up on the back burner. Two years later, I finished my military obligation, and we moved to rural Webster, South Dakota. We built a new home, and this time I was determined to make the home theater happen! We designed our own home, and the basement home theater fit right into the plans. I had the contractor lower the foundation 4 feet to give the room some depth. I had read that square rooms are poor choices for home theaters, but, with a degree of oppositional defiance, I set out to make a square 25-by-25-foot home theater. Filed Under: Reader Interiors $ Traditional Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007, 4:45 PM ET — By Tom J. Slager, Homeowner
After several years of reading about the home theater experience, my family and I finally decided to convert some unused basement space into our own dedicated theater. Since I enjoy doing home-improvement projects, I chose to do most of the construction myself and to hire a reliable company to provide and integrate the audio/video components. I had constructed a small, built-in entertainment center a few years before in our home in Cincinnati, Ohio, but had never done a project as large as this. 1 2 Older Posts >
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