The Frey Theater - DIY, but better every month - Page 2

This past weekend, I removed the two computer desks my daughters had been using, which were located just to the right of

my AV Rack, to make room for a pair of home-built media shelves. Below, I have cleared out the space where the desks were sitting...

 

 

 

Here I'm ready to setup the first of the two shelf units.  I constructed these from 1x6 Grade A pine stock, purchased at Lowe's.  It only took me about two hours to build each of the two shelf units. Each unit is 3 foot wide and 6 foot tall, and features 8 shelves spaced for DVD cases.

 

 

 

The second shelf is now in place, and I have loaded up the shelves with all my DVDs and Blus... Each of the 16 shelves
can hold 72 BD cases or 125 thinpack DVD cases, or up to 1150 BDs or 2000 DVDs total... Now I just have to re-arrange
and organize my collection, something I've really been needing to do!

 

Edited by FreyTheater - 8/15/10 at 9:47pm

 

 

 

A closeup of the barcode reader and the DVD Profiler program, displayed on a 26" Samsung monitor.  I scanned

over 800 DVD and Blu ray movies into my database in just a few hours - awesome!

 

Quote:

 

Homer - I like sitting close, my front row seating is about 8-9 feet from the screen - I perfer a 1:1 ratio sitting-distance-to-screen-width over the more common 1:1.5 ratio... but, no one who has come to watch movies in my theater has ever complained about being to close to the screen - it still doesn't come close to filling the field of view in front of your eyes, so you don't need to turn your head to watch one side of the screen to the other.,.

 

The screen itself is a Richview 120" motorized retractable screen with both IR and RF remotes; I did not build it myself.  Picked it up on eBay about 3 years ago, new for only $80, plus about $100 for shipping.  I use the RF remote so I don't have to point it directly at a sensor, and have it mounted vertically on the inside of my AV rack door for convenience. I sure can't complain about the price for a 120" screen, and it has given me very good service so far.

Just received my new Oppo BDP-93 3D-capable Blu-ray player last week, an upgrade from my Oppo 83... It's very nice.

This is a pre-release unit Oppo shipped out early to customers on their waiting list; it currently has a beta firmware on it,

and is still undergoing some tweaking to get it ready for general release to the public sometime in 2011. But, I've had no

operating or performance issues with it, so I am very pleased with the player so far...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by FreyTheater - 12/10/10 at 1:44pm

It's an HHP (Hand Held Products)  IT3800, with USB cord and HHP stand.

POPCORN!  My first theater room upgrade of 2011 is a new commercial-grade popcorn machine I purchased from an ad on Craigslist.

It is a $600 Gold Medal model 2085, which had been used only ONE time by the previous owner; I bought it in pristine condition for only $250! 

Below, I am getting ready to unload it from my car after picking it up from the seller.  Along with the unit, I also got a few popcorn supplies:

A Popcorn Scoop, Corn Measuring Scoop, a box of 350 popcorn bags, a 2 lb. carton of Flavacol salt, and a big 5 pound tub of popcorn:

 

 

 

I setup the popcorn machine next to the snack bar on an old metal cabinet I had out in my workshop. It happened to be
the same width and only 2 inches longer than the base of the machine, so I emptied all the power tools out of it and
brought it into the theater room. The cabinet will do just nicely until I can afford to buy a proper popcorn cart for the machine.

 

 

 

 

The first batch of hot, fresh popcorn has just been made in the new Frey Theater popcorn machine,
here being served up by my daughter... tasted just like theater popcorn, except I don't have any
butter topping for it yet. A 6 oz popper like this makes the equivalent of about 3 bags of microwave
popcorn, per batch...

 

New Movie Posters!  Here are a few of my latest Double-Sided movie posters

I purchased for the marquee light box in my theater room:  

 

 

 

 

 

DISASTER! THE FREY THEATER IS FLOODED WITH 1"-2" OF WATER FROM TROPICAL STORM LEE, SEPTEMBER 7-8, 2011


On September 7, 2011, tropical storm Lee funneled up the east coast between two strong pressure systems, dumping 9" to 15" of rain in the local area. The Frey Theater was inundated with water across the entire basement floor. The rain water pooled in the back yard against the rear of the house, and then overflowed the foundation. Water could be heard gushing like a waterfall behind the wood paneled wall in the bathroom, which then poured out into the basement overnight and covered the floor with 1" to 2" of clear rainwater. Fortunately, most of the water ran out the basement door into the garage area, where a drain in the middle of the floor drew off most of the water, preventing it from rising any higher than an inch in the theater area. But it didn't take much water to do a huge amount of damage to the theater room - 14 wall panels and all of the wall to wall carpeting were destroyed. Fortunately, all the furniture and theater equipment was spared, because most of it either sits up on rubber feet or is stored in carts or cabinets on wheels, up off the floor. Only a few speakers were sitting directly on the carpet, and those were moved to higher ground right away, and their damp bases dried out without any damage.

Here are a few photos of the flood damage...


The front of the Frey Theater is seen with the carpet saturated up to and over the top surface. The water started seeping in here on Wednesday night, and I had tried using the shop vac to suck up the excess water. By morning though, it was a lost cause... Fortunately, the purple carpeted stage was specifically built up on 1" dowel rod legs with rubber feet for water protection, so it and the speakers sitting on it did not get damaged.



Wet feet! The water here is actually covering my toes, even though you can't really see it.



In the rear of the theater, you can see the shiny surface of the water almost reaching the bottom shelf of the media shelves. The wood paneling on the outer walls is already starting to buckle at the bottom from soaking up water.



Fortunately, I had stayed up until 2:30 am the night before, moving some of my possessions that were sitting on the floor of the room and inside the basement closets to higher ground.



The water was deepest inside the bathroom, a good 2 inches. Because the water was strictly from rain runoff, it was very clear, making it hard to see in these photographs. But, the water is plainly visible here flowing over the door sill into the garage. It continued to flow constantly for over 24 hours before it finally stopped on Friday morning. Sweeping the water out the door with a push broom really didn't help much on Thursday while the water was still flowing. The floor drain in the garage saved the theater room from much more damage by keeping the water level from rising many inches higher...

I feel this was a once in 40 year event, at the most... So I'm not too worried about it happening again while I'm still living in the house. But, I have taken some preventative steps construction wise, to make it much easier on me if it does ever flood this bad again... I will post up some more pictures of the reconstruction here very soon, so check back regularly!

FLOOD RECOVERY - Carpet and Wall Damage.


By Sunday I had almost all of the carpet and padding pulled up from the floor. Fans and dehumidifiers ran constantly for the next two weeks.



Under the carpet, the concrete floor had 4 layers of paint on it - and the top layers were starting to peel...



My daughter relaxes comfortably with a good book, as her father slaves away at the destruction...



Removing all this loose paint on the floor is going to be a real nightmare!



The wooden paneling on the basement walls sucked up the water, and warped severely.



The remains of a sill plate board that ran along the floor of the front wall - I cut 1 1/2 inches off the bottom of the wall panels and found the sill plate was so rotted from previous water seepage that the deteriorating wood was as black as charcoal in some places.



Rented a small roll-off dumpster, had it dropped off in my driveway on Saturday, and began to fill it up.

Thanks Ben - actually, the renovations are already 80% done, I'm just a little behind on posting up photos on here - I'm adding a few pics at a time to my thread, as I get the time to do it...