[david yurik]

I drew out the frame dimensions and picked up the wood yesterday. Oak was quite expensive by the LF so I went with poplar. 1 x 4. I have a Kreg jig so it will all be assembled with pocket screws. I haven't decided if I am going to put a molding piece around the front yet. I am leaning to no and just setting the vertical runners back a 1/16" to make sure they don't touch the screen.

 

[david yurik]

Got the screen frame done and tried to use a king size sheet temporarily. It just wasn't quite big enough !! The spandex is on order.

Front shelf is done. I need to add some kind of foot or rubber to the speakers to prevent sliding.

 

[david yurik]

The spandex fabric showed up today. I still need to paint the frame and adjust the center supports. They're a bit too far out and need to be closer to the center.

 

[david yurik]

I didn't like how close the supports were to the FL and FR so I moved them in just a bit.

I held them in place for the Kreg screw with some of Harbor Freight's best !!

Then painted the back flat black.

Tomorrow I'll coat the front and the sides.

 

[david yurik]

The black Friday purchase is on its way !! Two 15" woofers. Now if wood prices would just go back to normal !!

 

[david yurik]

Some boxes showed up !! FI Audio Xv3 15" dual 1 ohm voice coils. 5-6 cu ft box to be built.

 

[david yurik]

I also set all the speaker levels to 70 db with this little gem.

 

[david yurik]

During the screen build I tried playing an image on just the black spandex. It was not good. Next adequate performer ( as expected ) was just a white sheet. And of course the best is the double layer spandex white over black. When I first played a few scenes, I noticed the light levels shifting. The Epson was set to some kind of auto light adjust. I changed that to a fixed cinema bright. The difference was night and day. The other huuuuge change was the amount of reflected light. I had so much of it before with just the sheet. No surprise there. I hoped the flat black front wall would absorb that and while it did some, it still reflected. With the black spandex now behind the white, almost no light at all is reflected off the sides and back into the room. You can really tell in the Avatar pic. The sides and bottom around the screen are all dark now.

 

[david yurik]

seats are ordered.

 

[david yurik]

I built the riser today. I can't get anything bigger than 72" around the basement landing so I had to build two matching sides. The seats line up with the front to back joists. The extra set on the sides is for my smaller 10" subs. They will start out in the corners so a little extra support was in order.

I screwed the two sides together in the middle with 5 deck screws.

I hot glued carpet pad to the bottom of the frame so it kept the wood off the concrete and provided a little extra leveling.

I ended up at 8" of total height with 1 layer of 1/2" OSB. This may turn into two we will see.

Dave

 

[david yurik]

Tonight was the carpet tack strip and pad for the lower floor. Those concrete nails are way beefier than the regular wood nail on the strip. I found it best to really hit them well and as straight as possible. I was averaging about 6 to 8 blows to sink them into the wood on the tack strip. I only have to make two fixes of the drywall !!

I'm still not sure what to do about the riser floor. The actual use will be so small I might just grab a gray remnant to offset the main area a bit. Lower floor black chairs black carpet. Riser chairs gray base gray carpet ??

These were good for maybe 2 passes on the pad. I also had to push pretty hard against a piece of 2x4 to make a decent cut. I now see why installers use actual quality blades for cutting.

 

[david yurik]

I made some progress this weekend.... I can now add carpet installer to my list of DIY skills.