Initial progress report

Instead of opening presents on Christmas morning, we spent our time putting blinds on the media room windows. Ideally this would wait until after the room is painted, but since my brother Daniel and his wife Kaela are joining us for Christmas they needed a decent place to sleep. I figured hanging sheets over the uncovered windows was just a little too tacky.

Picture of right rear corner of room showing new blinds and painter's tape

Once all of our guests went back home after Christmas, we spent a couple of hours taping the doors and baseboards to prep the room for painting.

View of left front corner of room showing painter's tape and a missing speaker hole

After that was completed, I spent another few perilous hours crawling around in the attic looking for my pre-existing wiring. From the layout of the room and the visible speaker wire boxes, I assumed that the room was pre-wired for 7.1 dolby digital surround sound. There's only two small problems...

First, the front left speaker wiring hole is missing. As you can see from the picture above, there is no speaker hole in the front left corner of the room. You can see the center channel speaker hole above the ladder and the right front speaker hole above the bathroom door.

Second, for 7.1 surround sound, there should be 7 speaker wires and 1 subwoofer wire coming out of the wall in the equipment rack corner of the room. When we purchased the house, only four wires were obvious. Somewhere behind the sheetrock there must be additional wires, but where?

The missing front left speaker wire was easily located once inside the attic. It was visible above the attic door. This was a relief because running wires after a house is built isn't the most fun thing to do. Encouraged, I began the search for the missing four speaker wire termination points to the equipment area.

After crawling around in the attic, I quickly determined that the location of the missing wiring box must be close to the visible one. That's good and bad news. The good news is that the wires are actually in the wall somewhere, again saving me from having to run them. The bad news is that they're located on an external wall. This means that there is no attic access and that the only way to find them is to start punching holes in the interior wall until I find it. Using my electronic stud finder and a screwdriver (thanks for the Christmas present Daniel!), I almost hit the mystery location with my first try. My first guess was close enough that with a flashlight I could see the wiring box two inches to the left. Success! Funny thing is that when I punched through the wall to open up the hole, I wasn't breaking through sheetrock. I was breaking through plaster and cardboard! This hole had been opened before, and then patched over! Why the original owner would go through all the trouble to have the room pre-wired and then cover over the holes, I'll never understand.

Sheetrock carnage and wiring termination locations

Now that the sheetrock work and taping is complete, it's time to paint!

Media Room Construction Begins!

In April of 2008, Sarah and I purchased our first home in Keller, Texas. We've spent the last 8 months doing all the things new homeowners do such as paint, purchase furniture, fix the odds and ends the previous owner neglected (because they were busy being foreclosed on!), and spend a fortune on a few drapes. Typical new home ownership drudgery if you ask me. It all needs to be done, and it helps make the house look more like a home. I think we're finally getting there!

Our house is a relatively typical home by suburban standards. Downstairs it has a split floorplan consisting of a master suite with sitting area, bathroom and walk-in closet, 2 additional bedrooms down a hallway with a bathroom, an office/study, kitchen, formal dining room, and a breakfast nook downstairs.

The upstairs consists of a single room...a 'bonus room' as the builders call it. It is approximately 400 sq. ft. and includes a full bathroom. Most in our neighborhood add a closet to this room and transform it into a second master suite or the dreaded mother-in-law suite. When we first toured the house with our realtor we knew exactly what purpose this room would serve for us...it would be our Media Room.

Now that the basic rooms downstairs have been furnished, we've decided that it is time to begin the task of transforming that 'bonus room' into a home theater/media room. We'll do our best to document the progress of the room and detail the lessons we learn and the decisions and purchases we make along the way. This blog will probably be a little less boring than watching grass grow...barely. That's ok by us. What does it say about YOU that you have nothing better to do than read this sad excuse for a blog?

Here's a few pictures of what we're starting with:

View of left rear corner of room showing uncovered windows and unfinished wiring boxes

View of left front corner of room showing attic door and MORE unfinished wiring boxes

View of right front corner of room showing bathroom door

Obviously we've got a lot of work to do before we can call this abandoned area of the house a full media room. We've got uncovered windows, unfinished wiring, brightly colored walls and ceiling, and ugly features such as the midget attic door and a bathroom door on the planned projector screen wall to deal with. Our goal is to have the room up and running in time for March Madness Final Four weekend. Considering we'll be doing all the work ourselves, I think that's an achievable goal unless we run into issues along the way.


First things on the list are to get the windows covered, the wiring plan figured out, the fixtures removed, and prep the room for painting. Over the Christmas/New Years break, we hope to do all that plus paint the room. More later...