In between marriages I moved house and needed a project to keep me busy whilst I pondered on life and love and waited for my next altogether better partner to come along.
The 3 bedroom semi was nice with a nice garden but the layout of the lounge was dreadful with no natural place for a TV (or the viewers) to sit
I pondered for months about whether I should make the changes which would give a much better layout but which would involve pullling half the house to bits and rebuilding it. The good thing was that I did not have to answer to anyone at this time about the considerable mess the work would create nor the bill for same
After much thought and deliberation I decided that I had to do it and bit the bullet preparing myself for a lot of hard work. In order to obtain the desired layout I needed to take out the three part staircase which turned 180 degrees up to the first floor so that I could replace this with a single flight running up the side of the outside wall.
To get enough room at the botton of the stairs between the stairs and the front door I had to move the upstairs bathroom wall back about 3 feet and completely re model the landing area.
Several upstairs partition walls had to come down and I had to knock down the entrance hall area and rebuild it. All of this provided me with a layout which would give me with the ability whilst rebuilding to fit a 7 foot pull down screen flush into the ceiling in front of the partitioned staircase.
Under the staircase I would build a home made rack and support surface for my 42 inch Plasma and all of my seperates. This would provide a place for all of the wiring to dissapear into especially as my design incorporated a 10 inch deep false wall behind the staircase where cabling could be hidden and routed.
A lot of ceilings, floor and joists needed to be removed during the alterations which enabled me to fit all of the speaker wires invisibly through the floors and under the coving which was to be fitted.
As a result you cannot see a single wire anywhere in the set up
I fitted 4 inexpensive Panasonic Surround package speakers flush into the ceiling at the rear of the eventual 7.1 set up again with the cables travelling around inside the coving.
The 4 rear speakers were rectangular. I bought some extruded aluminium L section from B and Q which I made into small frames mitred around and bonded to the speaker cases. The frames were then bonded with No More Nails Ultra into the holes I cut into the ceiling plasterboard . The previously grey speaker grille fabric on these was then lightly spray painted white to blend into the ceiling.
In the false wall behind the staircase I put a cut out into which I placed a center speaker from Richer Sounds (I forget the make but will get back to you). Once the centre speaker had been located and placed into the wooden cut out using blu tak to sit it on to cut vibrations, I made a light wooden frame with black speaker grille fabric from Maplins which was fitted over the cutout leaving a nice flush finish and again all the wires went through the false wall back to the receiver in my home made unit.
Another benefit to my redesign of the house was that there was a gap of about 10 inches between the back of the staircase and the wall which it went up against. This has been used to make some nice 'cut out' shelves and above has given me some space for a set of shelves for my 100 or so HDDVD.s, 100 or so Blu Ray.s and 100 or so (and diminishing as they are replaced by Blu Ray) DVD.s
My beloved second wife came along halfway through carrying out the alterations and install and distracted me for some time with her womanly ways which recentlty led to my little darling Molly being born !!
The work slowed for sometime but is now near completion. The reason for the lengthy story is that I am sat up in the middle of the night looking after a very poorly little 7 month old Molly and found myself trawling through the WHiFi website in more depth than usual coming accross the 'Your System' section. After reading about several other set ups I thought mine might be worthy of a mention.
If anyone is interested I will continue with pictures when I am able to sort out how to attach them !!!. Bye for now
The 3 bedroom semi was nice with a nice garden but the layout of the lounge was dreadful with no natural place for a TV (or the viewers) to sit
I pondered for months about whether I should make the changes which would give a much better layout but which would involve pullling half the house to bits and rebuilding it. The good thing was that I did not have to answer to anyone at this time about the considerable mess the work would create nor the bill for same
After much thought and deliberation I decided that I had to do it and bit the bullet preparing myself for a lot of hard work. In order to obtain the desired layout I needed to take out the three part staircase which turned 180 degrees up to the first floor so that I could replace this with a single flight running up the side of the outside wall.
To get enough room at the botton of the stairs between the stairs and the front door I had to move the upstairs bathroom wall back about 3 feet and completely re model the landing area.
Several upstairs partition walls had to come down and I had to knock down the entrance hall area and rebuild it. All of this provided me with a layout which would give me with the ability whilst rebuilding to fit a 7 foot pull down screen flush into the ceiling in front of the partitioned staircase.
Under the staircase I would build a home made rack and support surface for my 42 inch Plasma and all of my seperates. This would provide a place for all of the wiring to dissapear into especially as my design incorporated a 10 inch deep false wall behind the staircase where cabling could be hidden and routed.
A lot of ceilings, floor and joists needed to be removed during the alterations which enabled me to fit all of the speaker wires invisibly through the floors and under the coving which was to be fitted.
As a result you cannot see a single wire anywhere in the set up
I fitted 4 inexpensive Panasonic Surround package speakers flush into the ceiling at the rear of the eventual 7.1 set up again with the cables travelling around inside the coving.
The 4 rear speakers were rectangular. I bought some extruded aluminium L section from B and Q which I made into small frames mitred around and bonded to the speaker cases. The frames were then bonded with No More Nails Ultra into the holes I cut into the ceiling plasterboard . The previously grey speaker grille fabric on these was then lightly spray painted white to blend into the ceiling.
In the false wall behind the staircase I put a cut out into which I placed a center speaker from Richer Sounds (I forget the make but will get back to you). Once the centre speaker had been located and placed into the wooden cut out using blu tak to sit it on to cut vibrations, I made a light wooden frame with black speaker grille fabric from Maplins which was fitted over the cutout leaving a nice flush finish and again all the wires went through the false wall back to the receiver in my home made unit.
Another benefit to my redesign of the house was that there was a gap of about 10 inches between the back of the staircase and the wall which it went up against. This has been used to make some nice 'cut out' shelves and above has given me some space for a set of shelves for my 100 or so HDDVD.s, 100 or so Blu Ray.s and 100 or so (and diminishing as they are replaced by Blu Ray) DVD.s
My beloved second wife came along halfway through carrying out the alterations and install and distracted me for some time with her womanly ways which recentlty led to my little darling Molly being born !!
The work slowed for sometime but is now near completion. The reason for the lengthy story is that I am sat up in the middle of the night looking after a very poorly little 7 month old Molly and found myself trawling through the WHiFi website in more depth than usual coming accross the 'Your System' section. After reading about several other set ups I thought mine might be worthy of a mention.
If anyone is interested I will continue with pictures when I am able to sort out how to attach them !!!. Bye for now
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