The SUBmarine Theater Entertainment Complex

The basement of our home has gone through a much elongated metamorphosis over the last 15 years, and for fun I thought I'd share its entire – current – functioning state (who knows where it's headed!).

When we first bought our home, it had two finished rooms and quite a bit of unfinished space that was used as a dumping ground for junk (aka storage :-). One finished room quickly became a giant playroom full of toys, while the other adopted one of my only remaining bachelor day possessions (a black leather recliner), a small 20" ViewSonic TV that suffered from a crooked screen, and a Panasonic VCR. That room received minimal use (an occasional late night viewing of Fletch or Caddyshack while the rest of my family slept), but is the spring broad that launched my interest in home theater. And it's that room that has undergone multiple iterations as its developed into a dedicated space. Some of you have built ideal theater rooms that are (for a lack of a better term) turn-key upon finishing... my theater space has been coaxed from what was already present. That's led to some creativity (discretely covering windows, for example) and give-and-takes... and it will remain that way for the time being.

The theater room is slightly larger than 2000 cu ft and is totally light controlled (black rug and front 1/3rd of the room has Ultra Flat Black walls/ceiling). It houses a fixed frame 105" 2.35:1 Carada 1.0 gain screen paired with a JVC RS520 projector. The current sound system is a 7.4.4 arrangement comprised of SVS Ultra speakers (Elevation ceiling channels), with dual SB16 subs at 1/4 points along the front wall and dual PSA XS30 subs at 1/4 points of the back walls (yup... massive bass headroom... just the way I like it), and a system arrangement of an OPPO UDP-205, a Pioneer VSX21 (for bass shakers), an Emotiva XPA5 amp, and a rotation of AVRs (currently a Marantz SR7012 is running the show... and I think that one may stick around for a while!).

Over time, as my kids have gotten older, I've slowly swallowed the remainder of the basement, ditching old boxes and toys to make space for other passions. Luckily, my wife has generously approved! I've built an L-shaped gym to keep the body young (supposedly) and two game rooms (one that doubles as a workshop) to house my crazed pinball passion (which definitely keeps the mind young). Lots of time and hard work have been poured into all of the rooms... which, honestly, has been half the fun. I hesitate...

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