Home Theater – Part 3

We returned from our vacation after my last post and our new screen arrived the next day.  I didn’t get any pictures, but assembly was fairly easy.  Just a lot of stretching to get the screen fit to the frame.  It’s massive!

135″ Diagonal.  As you can see above, we also finished painting all the trim and the doors in Behr Marquee Silver City.

Meanwhile, I needed to get something to cover the windows.  Fortunately, our projector is bright enough the room doesn’t need to be pitch black, but for watching a movie, that is preferred.  The plus side is we can watch football games and other sports without all the drapes pulled.  I wanted to reuse the curtain rods that were in the house when we bought it.  Unfortunately, I realized the old brackets were not going to work because they stuck out too far from the window.  The effect of the blackout curtains would be negated by the 2+” of light coming out from the top and bottom of them.  I needed something that would keep the rod closer to the window trim.  I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find shorter brackets that weren’t in a set with rods.  (Honestly, I would have saved a lot of time and frustration just buying new rods with brackets in a kit.)  I turned to Pinterest and decided to use This Idea.  Appearance wasn’t a concern because I planned to hang the curtains over the brackets so they wouldn’t be visible.  Since my rods were larger, I used 1″ curved pieces.

Once I had the DIY brackets assembled, I spray painted them and the old rods with the Rustoleum Soft Black Iron spray paint I’ve been using elsewhere in the new theater.

I have the rods extended from wall to wall on the 3 dormer windows, so I did not reuse the finials.  To keep the rods from sliding on the brackets and falling off, I used black silicone pony tail holders on each end.

After much searching, I decided on curtains from Home Depot.  They are the Solaris Black Media Back Tab Curtains and I have two 54″ panels on each dormer window.  They have a satin feel and look to them, but they are machine washable.

The DIY brackets keep the rod close to the trim so very little light escapes out the top or bottom.

The curtain panels have both back tabs and a rod pocket for hanging.  I am using the back tabs.

The staircase window is smaller, so I hemmed a single panel down to around 4″ below the window trim.  I reused some finials on this rod since it doesn’t have walls on either side.  One side of the curtain is fixed by the bracket, but the other side is free so that it can be opened, if needed.

In my many trips to Big Orange and Blue, I’ve been picking up flooring samples.  The most expensive option is to replace all the carpet and cover the seating platform to match.  Otherwise, we’ll leave the existing carpet and cover the top of the platform with either resilient flooring (middle row) or laminate (bottom row).  It has to be something fairly light and thin since the platform is going to be heavy enough as is.

To be continued . . .