Media Room Makeover

[Animalector]

When we bought our place, the rumpus was the first on the list for work. The previous owners had a dog and must have let the dog into the rumpus room often because the carpet stank like unwashed animal.

First job was to rip up and dispose of the carpet, perhaps we should have tried to cut the carpet up, instead we thought we'd pull t through the door in one hit.. It got stuck a few times.. but with LOTS of effort we squeezed it through
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Next was the floor prep, Gave it a good sweep, then a suck, then a wet mop, then put this sealer stuff the tile place gave us.. I dunno what it is but I can find out if anyone is interested. There were a couple of cracks but didn't look like they were actually going anywhere (no major separation), plus the glue is apparently flexible..
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We made a couple of measurements to make sure the room was square, dummy fit some tiles so we had out positioning alright, then went at it, the first few took us a while to get down, and we ended up wasting about 1/3rd of the first batch of flexibond glue..
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That's me, we did eventually get some knee pads, certainly made life easier :;
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After our second batch of glue, starting to look alright in my opinion
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And another batch
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A couple of days later, and another batch
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Middle tiles done, only the edges and cut tiles to go.. We ended up buying a diamond blade wheel and an angle grinder for the interesting angles. there were no curved edges, all straight cuts, and the grinder and wheel were excellent. Highly recommended.
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Another angle, the top corner we had to leave until the glue dried so we could get at it from the tiles that we had already finished
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Angles around the bar complete, and grout finished. THe grouting process went alright, however we used the rounded nose of the float to shape the grout into a nice concave shape, everything looked fantastic and then the grout dried and shrank. So the gaps are a little deep, but not too bad, Something for people to look out for..
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100" of viewing awesomeness, Projector is a panasonic PT-AX100e, similar to the PT-AX200 they're selling now, just under $2k I think they go for now, and excellent quality, native resolution 1280 x 720 (720p high definition). I actually have some large free standing speakers on each side under the screen now, the audio is much much better with a real amp and speakers.
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Media PC in the background to run the projector. I use this machine for games, and major sporting events, but mostly for movies. Curtains are blackout material the room get's quite dark even in the middle of the day.
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Final comparison with the first shot, I thought the room would echo, but it's not too bad with the curtains and the lounge filling up the space
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Future plans:
1. Increas the screen size to around 150" (could go more with the projector being on the back wall.)
2. Fix the crazy light that the previous owners had hanging up with steel cable

Thanks for looking

[kevvy]

Look great with Media room, I wish I have Media room.

Go for 12v downlights ( not 240v downlight - this give crappy off white ) with dimmer switch , it would look better than crappy light you current have.

[Animalector]

Actually I though about downlights, however there's 2 things holding me back:

1. It's a cathedral roof, so no ceiling to mount them into and run wiring.
2. It's a bit of a bar / party room as well and downlights just wouldn't cut it.

I have decided to get some slimline fluros, one on each side of the room, for low light situations, there's those lights on the sides of the screen which I can just replace with very low watt bulbs.

Thanks for your comments,

Andy

[oohsam]

Im shocked that the room doees not echo. Tiles are terrible for acoustics, in a proper 5.1 setup anyway.... Personaly i'd have gone timber flooring, but each to their own. Does look better than that crappy carpet you had.
Good work I say. As long as you're happy with it!

[Animalector]

It's not too bad, with the soft curtains and the lounge in there, I'm considering adding a mat in front of the lounge (big one) which will help further, at the moment my surround sound is 5.0, I have no sub, but that will come soon enough..

Andy

[oohsam]

A mat would definatley help.
With the sub, I think you'll notice the echo more so. As sub's are non linear, it wont matter where in the room you put it, but I highly reccomend placing it in one of the corners of the room, about 3 inches from each wall for optimal sound.

You may even want/need to make a little timber floor under the sub (regardless if its downfiring or rear firing) to reduce the echo. Just something to think about if you think the sub sounds tinny...

Also, make sure you set your sub to the lowest freuqency possible (on the sub controls) and set the amp to 80Hz for the sub, and set your Front speakers to "small" speakers, which will basically only send midrange and high range acoustics to them, allowing the sub to take care of the hard stuff.

Sorry, I'm heavily into my audio! Got a bit carried away there.