In North Carolina, the owner was combing through an issue of Electronic House when he came across two things that stopped him cold: a to-die-for entertainment space and the location of the company that installed it. MHS Technologies just happened to be in the homeowner’s neck of the woods. So he placed a call, and it wasn’t long before two bedrooms and a bath in his basement were making way for a 22-by-13-foot theater.

It’s always tricky when you’re working with an existing space. In this case, the theater was in the middle of the home, and that required more than the standard amount of soundproofing. “We didn’t want the sound to leak to other parts of the house,” says Charley Dearmin, general manager of MHS, “so we had to insulate the ceilings and walls with a rubber lining and mineral fiber insulation.”

That’s a good thing, because when the homeowner cranks up the volume watching his favorite Western or action flicks, you not only hear the explosions and shots, Dearmin says, you feel them. “The two 15-inch subs in the JBL speaker system have a lot of punch,” Dearmin continues. “When there’s a gunshot on screen, you feel the concussion.”

Sound leakage may not be an issue after all, though, because no one’s likely to be anywhere but the theater when a movie is playing. Eleven comfy seats hold the whole family, including the grandkids, who often provide preshow entertainment on the stage.

The Auralex Starfield ceiling compensates for the 8-foot ceiling height. The stars, fiber-optic strands woven into black fabric, give the sense that the space is much bigger than it is. A LiteTouch control system, working with an AMX touchscreen controller, takes the lights down and brings up the fiber optics for an evening under the stars.

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