Thanks to an original bank vault door, a mural, and other props, this home theater may look cool, but it’s the backstory that’s money, baby.

The home is a bit older, and this room was completed as part of an extensive remodel. The homeowner called in Connected Technologies to do the lighting, audio and video, security and motorized window coverings.

A month into the project, the homeowner decided to convert a messy storage area into a home theater. Super! Most installers might be used to pipes scattered about and odds and ends hanging from the ceiling—but how about a giant safe door lying in the middle of the floor? “The client had a friend who owned a bank and closed it, so he bought the door ’cause he thought it was neat,” says Robert Ridenour, president of Connected Technologies. “It’s real, and really heavy.”

From that, an idea was born. However, the homeowner had a few requirements: The room needed to be easy to use and it needed to seat eight. Of course, the door also needed to be part of the action. The homeowner had been lugging it around and storing it for so many years, he couldn’t just drag it out to the curb after all that.

Instead of just slapping a random bank vault door onto the room, Connected Technologies added cherry wood and a mural that ties everything together nicely. “There’s even a bag of money that acts as a door stop for the safe door,” Ridenour says. The decor also distracts viewers from the equipment rack, which is located at the back of the room for easy access.

Despite the large-and-in-charge feel of this room, Ridenour says that the its small size, low ceilings and concrete and structural walls posed a lot of challenges for the install process. It took a lot of planning and precise execution to get the screen, drapes and other items into the room. “The room was literally shoehorned into the space,” he says.

That meant a lot that Ridenour and his crew had to perform a few miracles. To compensate for the hard surfaces of the cherry wood, Connected Technologies padded the walls behind the drapes and curved the rear wall to deflect mild and high reflections. The large overstuffed seating and carpeting also helped.

To keep things simple, the URC remote was designed to multitask, meaning that a simple job such as turning the system on would trigger equipment, the drapes, and cue up the DVD player.

Other details to keep the room personal include a family collection of beer steins, as well as trophies from the client’s auto racing hobby.

Rachel Cericola - Contributing Writer

Over the past 15 years, Rachel Cericola has covered entertainment, web and technology trends. Check her out at www.rachelcericola.com.