Week 22 Basement Restoration update
It has been a busy week restoring my room over the holiday break. Highlights of the work are:
Finalizing the painting of the walls:
Painter had to come out three times over three weeks. First time he put on two coats but we needed some touch up work around the outlets. The second time he came out he touched up the walls, but the new paint didn't match the first coat. So the third week he came out and put up another coat on the entire walls which finally came out really nice and rich.
Building/Painting new radiator box:
Since the new concrete floor raised the floor a couple of inches my old radiator box had to be cut down to fit the new space. What made this is that the old box was built out of various pieces of wood prior to the finishing of the basement by the previous owners. So I could either buy a new one built to spec for about $400, or try to "mod" the old one. So I obviously modded the old box, used wood filler of holes and major seams, 2 coats of primer, 4 coats of paint, and a coat of satin to top it off. I think it looks pretty good.
Building new DIY screen:
Figured I try my hand at building a new screen. Not too bad for my first screen. The mitered joins are a little to big. The folds of the fabric really made getting a tight fit hard. I think next time I may use spray adhesive instead of using staples for the screen framed pieces. This will cut down on the thickness at the corner, since I won't be joining folded fabric against folded fabric. Other than that I really learned a lot, plus the cost is so much cheaper. I could build 12 84" 16:9 screens for the price of one 84" screen from Carada. Plus after I adjusted brightness, contrast, and color on the projector the color looks just as good if not better than my Dalite screen
New projector mount:
New DIY screen required new mount. The projector mount had to be moved up a couple of inches. I changed the design from a simple mount against the floor joists to a tracked version that let me slide the mount back and forth as well as adjust for height. All of this without having to move the main mount platform that was installed against the joists. Still need to cut the new acoustic ceiling tile to fit, but all is working fine with the new mount.
New Front Speakers:
My Axiom M60s finally arrived. What a difference over my old Ohm FRS-11s. Its definitely a new experience. I will need to recalculate the reflection points as the speakers sit out into the room more than the Ohm's did. But I guess all of this is a labor of love anyway. They look and sound great. The room is very bright without the carpet, but that should be installed by next week, and she'll be finally ready.
