🖼️
The project:
We downsized some years ago, well I say downsized, we bought a 300sqm block and managed to put a 4x2 with a theater on it I did all bar the actual construction of the room myself .
- Materials:
Decorative Moulding
Decorative corners These may now be a special ordes item.
Matt black paint
Paint for the room (Cityscape)
Figure 8 speaker cable
Cat 6 Cable
Patch leads
Wall plugs
Screws
Filler
- Tools:
Circular saw
Paintbrushes
Paint roller
Hammer drill
Drill/driver
Various Hand tools
- Step 1:
The first job was to actually set the projector up on the roof so that I could see how big a screen I could achieve and having set everything square in the picture (keystone) I marked out the size of the screen on the wall.
- Step 2:
Next was to paint the room coming as close to the marked out area as possible.Then the cheat, I got a drop of black pigment added to a tin of flat white and painted the screen area with that, the drop of black kind of makes it more dense. You can actually get a special screen paint but it is expensive and as I am happy with the picture I didn't bother. Then you inspect the scren area for any imperfections and fill/ sand them out and paint again (imperfections tend to show better after painting hence the fix and second coat).
- Step 3:
I measured and cut the moulding and pre painted it and the decorative corners. 2 coats later I drilled and fixed them all in place (I didn't use any adhesive as I may go larger with the screen with a different projector and didn't want the hassle of trying to remove the adhesive)
- Step 4:
Now this step I did because I am a registered cabler, you may need to employ a tradie to do this. I pulled in all the cabling for the surround sound, HDMI and 4 network cables. I put 4 Cat6 in because the way things were going the sheer amount of data for video was getting higher and higher but I ended up with only 3 serviceable after the foxtel installer used one as a draw wire to get his coax cables in.
- Step 5:
Then all the electronics went in. We had a tv unit in black so didn't need to replace it. In there there is Foxtel, Set top box for FTA TV, Raspberry Pi running Kodi for streaming from a NAS Apple TV a NUC and surround sound sysyem. They aren't all visible in the picture as some sit further back in the unit.
We also added a NAS (Network access Storage) so we have about 2Tb of movies to watch but that is in my study.
- Step 6:
Finally what would a theatre be without reclining seats. Not all remotes are on show, there is a mini keyboard and track pad for the NUC and we use our Iphones as the remote for Kodi. I'm also about to buy a HDMI switcher so I don't have to keep swapping the hdmi from the apple tv to the NUC (not enough inputs on the surround sound) and there is a google mini in there to control the room lighting.
