Home Theater Remodel - A Trip Down the Polk Forum Spending Rabbit Hole

I completed a total remodel of the home theater last summer and am finally getting around to organizing some pictures to share. I probably won't get to all of it today so check back periodically for updates.

First off, a HUGE thanks to @nooshinjohn who provided a lot of cool ideas that made this project so much more that I originally intended it to be.

A few things prompted this project and it certainly experienced major scope creep along the way. The primary motivations for this project were my own audio 'needs' and aging carpet. The original screen and equipment cabinet were a present from my wife over 15 years ago and it was designed/installed in 9 sections. For reference, this cabinet was designed specifically for the Polk RT5000 HT system. The opening in the middle cabinet perfectly fit the CS1000P (and later the SRT center channel). As a built-in, the carpet was installed around it, which meant if there was going to be a change in the theater configuration, it had to happen concurrently with carpet replacement.



When we moved into the house, this cabinet system came with us and fit fine in the family room. However, it placed the right SDA speaker in a horrible location. When I bought the 1.2TLs from @nooshinjohn, it was even worse. You can see in the above picture that I had to remove the baseboard in order for the 1.2TL to fit.



Rooms are never perfect and I have had it in mind for years to figure out a way to get the SDA's optimally placed.

I kicked off this remodel mid-July with the goal of completing the entire thing by September 2. Why that date? World premiere of Amazon's Rings of Power series. No way did I want to watch that on a small TV and hear it on a pair of Monitor 4 bookies.

My initial project scope was:
Remove the cabinet and motorized screen
Create an opening between the faux screen wall and secret hallway behind it
Carpet the room
Place a pre-fab cabinet in front of the opening in the wall and install the components.
Install a fixed screen on the wall after repainting it.

This seemed like an innocent and not-too-expensive goal.

Then @nooshinjohn got involved providing some ideas (barnwood wall to be exact) plus the idea to re-use the bottom portion of the solid oak cabinet but stain it to match the new wall behind it (thus keeping part of the cabinet gift from my wife in place). He also scored me a killer deal on an Epson 6050UB. Enter the need to re-wire for 4k and different projector placement.

After that @DSkip decided to sell his Marantz 7704. Enter the need for an upgrade to ATMOS which = speakers, wiring and the search for another power amp.

I figured I might as well just get it all done....and all of it by September 2.

The first step was removing the cabinet and doing wall repair. When we originally moved in to the house, my wife had the incredible idea of building a closet space behind the screen for each access to the back of equipment for wiring. It also added some much needed storage space. I pulled out the old 42U equipment rack and cleared the space. That left a bunch of audio and Cat6 cabling spaghetti to sort through.

Once the cabinet was out, all of the openings had to be patched up. My daughter helped out quite a bit with this process.



The next part of the process was to build a new opening to support the new cabinet design. Here you can see the cabinet moved left enough to give me the ability to place the right 1.2TL exactly 3 feet from the wall.


I was fortunate to have multiple circuits available and installed a dedicated 20amp circuit for the ADCOM 8507 I picked up to run the surrounds and ATMOS speakers. The Sony ES Carousel CDP helped itself to the second outlet because it was nearby.



The second circuit was a 15amp to support the remaining gear. With the power off, this was a great opportunity for my daughter to learn some basic electrical wiring skills.


All of the home networking gear and wiring was moved and organized to small panel up and out of the way.


Next step was to paint the room and stain the cabinet. I found a cheap can of oops paint to serve as a dark color to place the barn wood on and spent a lot of time going through different stain color options. After painting we got down to business learning to install the barnwood.










The Middle Earth map was lucky enough to score some leftover barnwood for a frame.



The four Polk TC265i in-walls got a paint job as well. The plastic had yellowed over time.



I had purchased a pair of Klipsch in-walls at 90% off when a Best Buy Magnolia moved locally and those became the easy, low-cost option for the front overhead ATMOS speakers.




I purchased a Silver Ticket 120" grey matte screen. I was sure glad to have a laser level to help get it installed.




Next up was carpet. Before that was installed, I purchased two BlueJeans Subwoofer cables and some 12gauge speaker cable to run for the rear placement of the SVS PB13 Ultras and rear bookshelf speakers that would begin serving as the rear surrounds (compliments of a donation of 2 sq ft from my wife of her sewing space). I ran this in-wall behind the screen and then along the wall for careful installation under carpet.




The sound closet behind the screen came together nicely with the carpet in place. We were able to use another piece of the original cabinet for storage.


Carpet installation.


With that, I'm calling it a day. I'll get some pictures of the gear installation up hopefully tomorrow.