Mystery Science TARDIS Console Room

[michael27]

This build diary is for the home theater room.  My other thread is documenting the police box, but this is where I'll show my work for the inside (it is bigger, after all.)  My first goal is to get the room usable, so a lot of the eye candy will get installed later, but there is a lot of wiring to get into place during the build.  This is primarily a home theater, so there's also a lot of sound design going into it.

I'll start off with some rough renders of my idea for the space.  The sides will use the 12th doctor roundels.  They're not pictured here, but I'm going to have the lit circles in each hexagon.  There will also be the ring of lights around the soffits.  The walls are positioned so the roundels swing open to give access to electric and network panels, and the side speakers will be embedded in them as well.

Farther down the build, I'll be including the upper deck lit circles over the rear speakers.  I plan to build the upper deck bookshelf to house the entertainment system.  Eventually, there will also be a console build, complete with working controls for lights, sound, and picture control.

[michael27]

Lots of work on boring stuff... Half the drywall/green glue is in under the subfloor, ductwork has been reinstalled with rigid duct, exterior wall studs are in place. 

Starting to build interior walls!  Very exciting!  It's starting to feel like it's an actual room.  Changed the layout for the front a bit, decided to go with speakers behind the movie screen.  That allowed me to extend the cabinet/shelf space up on each side.  I'm thinking these will be bookshelves now instead of cabinets.

[michael27]

Updated render:

[michael27]

Where does a year go?  This photo update doesn't look like much, but there's a whole lot of work hidden between these two shots.  Almost ready to put up drywall!

[Volpone]

What are the clock-framed looking things behind the [future] drywall?  And why are they all the same size/format but their frames are different sizes? 

And will there be roundels over them that open up? 

[michael27]

That's the front screen wall.  The boxes are speaker enclosures, the "clock" is the speaker wire taped to the back of the box so I don't cut it when I cut the drywall to install the in-wall speakers.  I've got Left, Center, and Right speakers for the actual surround sound, and two additional speakers for TARDIS sound effects and voice command response (Alexa for now).  I'm going to use a screen that I can put the speakers directly behind, mostly to get the most real estate from the wall, but I also like the sound coming from the actual field of view.

The red box on the right though... that will be an opening roundel. 

[Volpone]

That's the front screen wall.  The boxes are speaker enclosures, the "clock" is the speaker wire taped to the back of the box so I don't cut it when I cut the drywall to install the in-wall speakers.  I've got Left, Center, and Right speakers for the actual surround sound, and two additional speakers for TARDIS sound effects and voice command response (Alexa for now).  I'm going to use a screen that I can put the speakers directly behind, mostly to get the most real estate from the wall, but I also like the sound coming from the actual field of view.

The red box on the right though... that will be an opening roundel. 

Oh, my giddy aunt.

[michael27]

Gotta stay safe working with insulation.

Are you my mommy?

[michael27]

Moving right along, finished all the LED wiring, last of the ceiling ductwork, and last of the ceiling insulation install.  Got the first wall layer installed on the side walls of the theater.  I'm using plywood so I have a solid under-surface anywhere I need to attach anything to the side walls.  I'll put a second layer of drywall over that to finish it.  All the roundels need to be wired for LEDs, so they all the wires needed to be placed before attaching the plywood.  Now I'm working on installing the soffits.  The first part of the back soffit can be seen here.  Also on the wall is the mini-split module.  Props to my brother for coming over and helping me with the install this fall.

[michael27]

Oh, my giddy aunt.

Still kicking myself for not saying they were flux capacitors...

[michael27]

I spent some serious effort in January working on wrapping up the details and installing the drywall in the theater room.  This will be all for the theater for a while, as I need to finish the drywall in the rest of the basement.  Between the soffits, LED wires, and special hexagon cutouts for the utility box access, though, the rest of the basement looks pretty straightforward.

I originally was going to have the utility box covers swing open, but during design changes I ended up putting the hinge where it wouldn't work with the soffit in the middle of the room.  I rerouted the LED wires to inside the hexagons and will be using a completely removable panel held in place with magnets combined with a magnetic wiring connector.  It does make the wiring more complex, but hopefully the overall solution will be simpler.

[ciderman]

Dont forget you need a roundel drinks cabinet for Whiskey/Brandy to be really authentic 😉