Trim and Helpful Accents

The original remote control for the home theater was purely tablet-based (e.g., iPad), and I wanted a place to store the remote when not in use. So, I added this small holder on the wall next to the main seating row for easy access.

When the remote was upgraded to the Harmony Elite, which includes a hard remote with physical buttons, I placed it on its charging stand on the half-wall. This is the remote we use most often, but the Harmony hub also supports using a tablet app, so the holder can still be used, as shown in the photo. However, we mainly use the hard remote now.

A small pass-through opening for a Blu-ray player was added to the room to start a Blu-Ray without leaving the room. For sound isolation, the back of the opening is a fully enclosed box where the player sits. Due to the arrangement of the acoustic panels on this part of the wall, there was less than 12 inches of width available for the pass-through. The Sony S3700 was chosen partly because it is nine inches wide, and the opening would fit in the available ~12 inches. This is shown in the upper portion of the photo.

Once the disc is loaded, what should be done with the case? A small shelf was added below the player to hold the Blu-Ray case for the currently loaded disc to solve this minor question.

I have considered upgrading the pass-through, but because UHD players are physically wider, e.g., the UB420 is 12.5 inches, this would require redoing the box and cutting a bigger opening, which I have not bothered to do so far.

The rear left corner of the theater is a semi-dead space. The idea was to add some cabinets to this area, but this has not been completed. The black media case is in this corner, and a small set of shelves is hanging on the wall. The top shelf can contain snacks, while the bottom has space for one of the room's subwoofers.

The left side of the picture shows the final finished entry door. This is a solid Oak door that is tightly sealed and thus provides some reasonable sound isolation.

This area is still a bit underwhelming and needs some more work. I could use some additional cabinetry to fill in the unused space. We need to figure out what would work in this space.

In the primary seating row, the relatively inexpensive recliners have cupholders but no place for snacks, so I added a shelf next to the armrests of the recliners on each side of the row. The left side of this picture shows the shelf on the right side, and the left shelf is attached to the wall. (Ok, that is confusing.)

The Z-Wave lighting remote control is the little white object on the right-hand side shelf . . . on the left side of the photo.

Adding front Atmos-height speakers was done several years after the completion of the home theater. The original idea was to add Atmos speakers onto the ceiling rather than into it.

This picture shows the beam with the speakers embedded. This approach looked cleaner and allowed us to hide the wiring more easily inside the wood beam.

The beam was built in three main pieces: the two end and center sections to which the speakers are attached. This middle section was attached to some wood plates, which in turn were screwed into the ceiling. The wood beam also functions as the cabinet for the speakers.