Home Theater

When my kids were little and the toys started taking over the house, we decided it was time to finish the basement.  My son was four and my daughter was one.  While designing the basement my husband thought it might be a cool idea to have a home theater.  My husband is a gadget guy.  He loves new gadgets.  Surround sound was one of his favorite new things.  We had a basic system, but he wanted a real home theater.  Keep in mind, this was nine years ago.  Home theaters were really in their infancy.  No one we knew had a theater back then.  I totally thought it was a crazy idea.  But after some convincing, actually a lot of convincing, I agreed to allocating a spot in the finished basement for it.  When we told the contractors about our idea they were very excited to build it.  They had never done such a thing before.  There was this new thing called the internet (remember...it was nine years ago) and my husband started using it to do some research.

Framing movie posters was the perfect idea for artwork

We were going to need seating for at least eight.  The theater is  approximately 15'x13'.  We looked into buying a sectional sofa, but then not everyone would be seated facing the screen.  If we bought two sofas, we still couldn't really seat that many people and the sofas would look very bulky and not very theater like.  While searching the internet, my husband found a company in Texas that sold theater seating.  It really seemed like a crazy idea that we were going to buy theater seats from someone we didn't know in another state and he was going to ship them to us.  (Can't stress enough that the internet was really new).  My husband called the company and talked to the guy for a long time.  He felt comfortable after that conversation going forward with the purchase.  Honestely, I was sure this wasn't going to work out.  But it really did.  The theater seats arrived and they were awesome.  The theater seats took up much less room than a sofa, and we were able to build two tiers so that we had stadium style seating.  A huge bonus was that they cost significantly less than buying a sofa...not to mention it really looked cool.

  We have a bay window in the front of the house.  Therefore, the foundation also has the same bay in the basement.  This made it a perfect place to put a TV the size we would need.  No flat screens back then.  This TV is super deep, perfect for the spot.  When it was delivered the guys were barely able to get it down the stairs.  I rigged the curtains.  I went to bed and bath and bought some red velvet-like drapes.  I then attached the rod to the ceiling.  I bought a a few extra panels which I swaged across the top and tied it to the rod with the ties that came with the drapes. We were going for an old movie theater look.

No theater is complete without the snack bar area.  A refrigerator and popcorn maker and small microwave.

All of the equipment is on the side, so that when you are watching a movie, you don't see anything but the screen.  We have a closet that is under the stairs to the basement that has access to the back of all of this equipment.

Can't forget the seating for my daughter's dolls.

All the walls are painted a burgundy and the ceiling is painted black (how many places in your house can you paint a ceiling black).  Those two ottomans are used either for extra people or to put your feet up on if you have a front row seat.

Since we put this theater in, we rarely go out to the movies.  Occasionally if a new kid movie comes out and my kids don't want to wait we go.  Otherwise, movie night in our theater is the best.  It has everything you could want...and all without the annoying talkers and gum under the seat you often find at your local theater.

Let me know what you think.  Turns out my husband's idea wasn't so crazy after all.

-Judy
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