From Pool House to Party Zone: Multipurpose Room Silver

TAKE THE AGING POOL HOUSE of an historic 1.6 acre home, split it into a recreation/game room, bar, dance patio, spa, and home theater, add about 1,000 colored LED lights and a massive multi-zone audio system, and you’ve got a homemade club atmosphere to rival the best Las Vegas has to offer. Through the vision of the homeowner, a former disc jockey, and the hard work of the home technology geniuses at Movietime, of Corona, Calif., this multipurpose room transformed from a utilitarian building into the hottest party pad in town.

Staying true to his DJ roots, the owner of this incredibly reconstructed pool house wanted to go all out and give the new space “rock concert” audio and lighting. The Crestron home control system that Movietime installed coordinates a 1,024-channel DMX lighting system split into 40 zones, and lets the owner set the color scheme from a color wheel on a Crestron iPad app. Couple the lighting effects with not one, but two JBL Synthesis sound systems with gigantic 18-inch hidden subwoofers, and it definitely feels like a rock concert.

According to Movietime owner Ilya Kandibur, “This project is something that is hard to convey even with pictures. It’s not so much a room as it is an experience, as a wall of music pours out over the dance patio and recreation room and the LED architectural and tape lights partake in their own choreographed dance of color. From the Onyx countertops and accents to the starfield ceiling over the spa and two-tier home theater, everything here is custom designed and top of the line.”

Standing in the middle of the recreation room, you are surrounded by choices in every direction. Start the night by challenging a friend to a game of pool or air hockey while enjoying the 75-inch Samsung LED TV with JBL Synthesis speakers, both of which are recessed into concrete. From there, wander straight ahead into the kitchen and make a fresh drink from the backlit bar before heading into the two-level movie theater with a 12,000-lumen Digital Projection International laser projector and pressure sensitive glass stairways that change color as you walk on them. Relax in the Fortress luxury theater seats, and rest your head on the fold-out bed if you need a break. But don’t get the notion that the night is over.

After the movie, walk back out into the rec room and turn right to find yourself in the indoor spa with an in-floor hot tub, made even more dazzling by the custom dome projection system that puts a synthetic starry sky above your head. The pros at Movietime installed a laser projector in the floor next to the hot tub and perfectly masked the light path so no light spills over: only the dome is lit with a moving sky, clouds, and stars. Now that you’re feeling refreshed, may we suggest a wild dance party?

Open up the Crestron app to access your favorite tunes and hit the Audio Sync button to turn the entire indoor area and outdoor dance patio into an orchestra of light and music with speakers and subwoofers from JBL, Revel, and Sunfire hidden in the walls and the ceiling. Suddenly, spaces begin to fade and strobe, with various areas flowing with the music and shifting through color schemes as acrylic light bars in the rec room bump to the beat. You’re completely surrounded by an aural and visual experience you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

“The owner here really gave us free reign to create the wildest party zone we could,” Kandibur says. “We were able to maintain the building’s historic Spanish appeal while reinventing it from the ground up, literally. I mean, what other home has a two-tier movie theater with color-changing steps? It’s incredible to see such a vast space transition through our color presets from ‘Icy’, a mix of blues and purples, to ‘Warm Chill,’ with its soft red and oranges and flash and stream in conjunction with the music.”

By pulling out all the stops, this homeowner took something completely ordinary and turned it into a truly extraordinary home renovation. EH

Check out this video of some of this home’s features.

 

Photography: Mark Alexander Systems Design & Installation: Movietime, Corona, Calif. Builder: DeVitis Construction, Sherman Oaks, Calif.