New Home Theater - Advice Needed (1 Viewer)

[Ken Smiley]

We have a finished basement room, 31' x 19' that we'd like to turn into a Home Theater. We already have some furniture in the room and a Mitsu projection TV but we want to turn the room into more of a true theater like experience with a projector, some better equipment, and theater seating, some of it on risers.

I'm certain that many here have done this sort of thing themselves to varying degrees as I've looked around this forum some. What I'm having a problem with is where to get started. It seems that there are companies out there who will design and build entire home theaters for you from $25K on up to whatever your wallet can afford. We'd like to do some of this work ourselves, but will need professional help as well.

We've looked around in our area and so far have only found one group claiming to be specialists near us (Kansas City), but we looked at a sample theater they did in someone's house and there were several items we didn't like about it, not to mention the cost.

So rather than me taking untold hours to sift through this forum to try and glean the nuggets that might help us, I was wondering if some kind soul(s) out there would point me in the direction of some comprehensive reading on the subject? Are there particular design companies who are highly rated and are a good bang for the buck, or are all of them only for those who have money to burn? Are there independent contractors out there who frequent this message forum that would be willing to work with us on this?

I'm really at a loss of where to begin. I promise in exchange for some assistance getting started (or perhaps doing the whole thing) that I'll take photos every step of the way and completely document the process to help others in the future. I have done so with other projects in the past and this has worked well for everyone involved. It's time to do the Home Theater now, so please help us get started!

Many thanks in advance!

PS. If this is the wrong section of the forum to post this in, please direct me where I should be posting this.

Thanks again!

 

[Chip_Slattery]

Since you've already identified that you'd like professional assistance there's only one place (IMHO) to begin:

Design Cinema Privee

The advantage of Design Cinema over some other companies is that you can specify their level of involvement, from plans only that you can work off of on your own (which I opted for) to full-blown installations.

Dennis Erskine is the owner of Design Cinema Privee and a contributor here. If you do a search you'll find that he comes highly recommended.

There are other designers out there (and on these forums) that I'm sure are equally as capable as Dennis and his company, so please no offense is intended toward others. I just tend to be a bit biased since Dennis designed the HT I'm currently building.

 

[Pam W]

I second Chip's advice!

pam