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Welcome to tinytheaterroom.com and the very first post. This is a website where me and my kid will talk about things we watch, gadgets we play around with, video game adventures and other fun experiences we encounter while hanging out in our tiny theater room. I thought a history of this particular tiny room would as good as place as any to start off. It's taken over a decade of changes to make it the theater it is today.
Phase 1: Construction Late 2006 - Early 2007
This particular tiny theater started out as a patch of dirt in late 2006, it then evolved into a decent sized hole in the ground and eventually settled into the form of an unfinished basement in early 2007.
As soon as I stood on the side of the foundation I had visions of what that part of the basement would become some day.
I started drawing up plans of what I wanted to do with the room shortly after I was able to set foot in it. It took a really long time to get it to where it is today, but it was a fun journey.
Phase 2: Humble Beginnings and Modest Upgrades Late 2008 - Early 2017
The initial setup included a well used cream colored leather loveseat, a 19" CRT TV to which I hooked up to my original NES. I then slapped up a giant poster of the over world from the The Legend of Zelda to the wall and it was off to the races.
As time passed more gear stated making it's way into the "theater", an old VCR, a handful of VHS cassettes, my turntable, a used Sony two channel receiver bought for $25 off of Craigslist, a pair of old Klipsch surround speakers bolted to the ceiling and my wonderful Velodyne sub that had never earned a place in the living room. I now had a 2.1 setup with with a massive sub to play 20 year old gaming systems. I was quite proud of myself.
The room continued evolve from there include a decade old 720p 55" Mitsubishi rear projection TV from craigslist, a birthday gift from some of my pals. The TV looked nice and it turned on most of the time. At some point I decided to hang some curtains up to cover up all the white plastic insulation on the walls, which sounds cheesy but really made a big difference in toning down the asylum look unfinished basements have these days.
The couch got an upgrade, my cat pee'd on the cream colored one so it had to go. Nicole, my wife, added a snazzy costco rug to the mix, which really tied the room together.
Some of last additions to this era include my first projector, which I picked up from a friend at work, and a 94" projector screen.
I rounded up a few more of Klipsch speakers from a friends basement along with with a dusty 5.1 Sony receiver.It's funny that when boys grow up, get married, move into real houses and start having kids, all their big bulky, amazing stereo equipments ends up abandon. Only to be replaced with tiny Bose speakers and sound bars. I've made it my mission to adopt some of that old equipment and put it back into service in my basement.
Lastly I received a very nice birthday gift one year of a fantastic new center channel speaker that fit the room much better. A good center channel makes all the difference in the world for movies.
The first post I talked about how the tiny theater room started to come together. This post will talk about when things really started moving along. The time frame is still measured in years but compared to the rate if change in the first decade of living in this house things start moving much faster.
Phase 3: Framed Mid 2017- Mid 2018
I had a great neighbor for several years named Jim. He was bit of a jack of all trades. He owned several business over the years but ended up doing some handy man work one summer between other gigs. He had some constructions chops so I had him frame in my theater room over the summer.
He was great to work with and made my pencil and paper sketches come to life.
I had Jim build out the walls and a trey ceiling where the projector was going to live along with some nice soffits to cover up the duct work. I extended the curtains I had behind the screen to wrap around the entire room and dragged in some of my arcade cabinets to the back of the room.
Over the course of the following year I did all the low voltage wiring myself for speakers, USB ports, ethernet, HDMI runs, and what not so when the time came to drywall the room would be ready to go. The theater stayed in the walls without drywall phase for about a year.
Phase 4: Drywall Mid 2018
My neighbor Jim had some free time the following summer so I had him come back over and hang, the drywall and painting. Once of his previous jobs was as a painter and he did nice work.
It took a month or so to get all the drywall work done and ready for paint but it was sure fun to watch it all come together. Once the drywall was done I put in all the AV boxes and connectors and we were ready for paint and carpet. But that's for my next post.
In my first two posts I talked about the evolution of my tiny theater room from a dirt plot to a rooms with real walls and drywall installed. Now I'll talk about the final touches that made this space into the tiny theater it is today.
After the drywall went up and my neighbor Jim finished up the paint, which turned out great in my opinion, things really started moving.
It took me a couple of weeks to get carpet picked up and installed. The walls are a deep blue color in an eggshell finish as to not be too reflective.
The raised part of the ceiling is a matte black paint as to not reflect light when the projector is on and the lights in the room are dimmed.
Me and a friend crafted up a riser so I could have the carpet dude cover it when they came to install the carpet for the rest of the room. I read up quite a bit on how tall to make the risers and how to position the couches to insure good lines of sites for all our seats. I'll talk more about the layout of the room in a future post.
This shows some more of the wall plates and the carpeted risers. I ran two USB cables in the wall to come out right by the couch so I can use USB Xbox accessories. Like the racing wheel as well as the wired USB mic for RockBand4. Me and my pals like to get together every once and a while and have RockBand Jam sessions.
This shot shows the speaker wall plates and the locations of where all the surround speakers would end up taking residence. The two couches are lines up and the back row is on it's riser. I was quite pleased how they turned out. I feel I made the most of the tiny space I had. Full sized couches would fit and still leave enough room to walk around.
This shot shows the speaker wall plates and the surround speakers in their final location. The molding around the door wasn't put on for several more months. Took me a while to find some I liked and even more time before I actually installed it. You can see my electronic dart board that arrived in the middle of this project. I'll talk about it more in a future post as it warrants some more detail.
This is the final layout with the screen, curtains, couches all settled in. The theater stayed in this state for a several months and brought me many months of enjoyment.
Phase 6: Lights, Memorabilia, Automation Late 2019-Mid 2020
Over the next few months I installed some track lights on the ceiling to light up my movie posters. It took some trial and error to get the right bulbs. Some were just two bright to light up posters, but I eventually found some LED bulbs on amazon with a 40 degree angle that worked out perfectly.
This is a shot of the posters lit up with the final LED bulbs. Just enough light to highlight each poster.
This is my Raiders of the the Lost Ark corner. I was super pumped to receive a fertility idol from the beginning of Raiders for Christmas last year.
I have a whole wall for dedicated to The Shining, if you are a fan of the movie you will get it. If not it will just seem like random wall art other than the movie poster. You can see the top of my lil' pup popcorn machine. Which is great for two people. I'll get into the gear that powers the theater room in a future post including Lil Pup.
This is the rear corner of the room with some more posters and decent view of the track lights.
For my birthday this year I received nano leaf light panels. They have a setting that reacts to music with really makes watching music videos come alive.
Also, my partner in crime in the tiny theater room, my daughter Molly, highly recommends the video for Boyfriend by Mabel. I have to agree, it's a banger. Check it out with the nano leaf lights below.
