Basement Makeover: MEDIA ROOM

Hello all! 

As promised via Facebook yesterday, I have a new blog for you featuring our latest project:

a spectacularly-over-the-top-but-totally-necessary

MEDIA ROOM

before we had this sad 73" TV

[sarcasm]

but my brother parents wanted a new TV for their new basement, so they gladly took it off our hands.

the cords, speakers & dvd's really class up the cheap Target entertainment center.

My husband is a bit of a electronics junkie.

[^understatement of the year]

He's constantly searching the internet and reading blogs & forums on the latest and greatest in the electronics world.

Whether it be phones, TV's, audio systems;

you name it, he knows about it.

Which tends to hurt the budget a bit.

So my one stipulation when he brought up this idea was he had to sell our old TV first and not spend any additional money on the projector he so desperately "needed".

I was firm.

I wasn't breaking down on this one.

[c'mon, we had a 73 inch TV; it's not like we were hurting in the size department.]

 Plus, I had this idea in the back of my mind of the old projectors from high school.

You know...the fuzzy ones you could barely read?

Yeah, this projector isn't like that.

Not even a little.

The day it arrived, Matt took it home and immediately hooked it up to see what the picture looked like.

10 minutes later I get a call at the office.

I answer, exasperated [it was 3 pm and everyone and their dog needed something from me]

"Good Afternoon, McDonald's, this is Mallory."

"I just wanted to tell you this projector is effing awesome." 

[I'm paraphrasing, here]

 All I could do was laugh.

He was like a kid at a candy store.

When I got home, he immediately dragged me to the basement to show off his new toy.

I was flabbergasted by how insane the picture was.

It looked exactly like a TV screen.

Only better.

Why?

Because it covered the entire wall. 

Yeah.

That's right. 

The whole wall.

And all I could think was how FREAKISHLY AWESOME

this basketball season was going to be.

Since our fam has been out of town in Florida this week, we had nothing to do this weekend.
The plan was to paint the walls a dark color so it would look similar to a dungeon.

I didn't get a "before" picture because Matt got too excited and started moving stuff around before I even got home. Him & Phil were already taping off the trim when I got home from the hardware with our paint supplies. But at least this way you can see what color the walls were.

 We painted the wall that was going to house the screen charcoal black. We didn't have to paint the whole middle of the wall because the screen would cover it anyway.

 Then we hung the screen.

This was quite the process. 

We had to ensure it had no bubbles and was level. 

The dimensions were 126x71. 

AKA: GIANT

I'm sure we looked like Dumb & Dumber trying to get it on the wall correctly. 

I was actually quite surprised how we managed to make it look good.

 The next morning while Matt was at work, I got up at 8 and doddled around until HL opened.

Matt wanted black felt to go around the edges of the screen.

"It catches light," he says. *rolls eyes*

 I bought 3 yards of black felt which turned out to be WAY too much.

But I had forgotten Matt had also asked me to get some material to cover the windows in the unfinished part of the basement and it happened to be just enough.

I was happy I wasn't going to have 2 yards of black felt lying around, collecting dust.

Cutting the felt for the edges wasn't a simple task, either. I wanted to make it as even as possible, so I measured three inches in width down the length of the felt and repeated this process 5 times. I glued them on to the screen with hot glue [man's greatest creation].

After we finished painting all three walls, did touch up, moved the furniture, drilled holes in the walls, hung the speakers, moved the components to the back room, hung the projector, cleaned the screen, vacuumed the carpet, and wiped down everything - 

  we had a finished product!

 I found some great metal art at HL

50% off, SCORE!

 and other movie decor.

We're going to hang movie posters on the other wall, we just haven't gotten that far yet.

 So, suffice it to say we watched a lot of movies this weekend.

 I love the colors I picked & the movie wall hangings are so cute [including their price].

Feel free to stop by any time to watch a flick with us

and when basketball season rolls around, just expect that we'll be watching at our house. ;) 

I had a couple other projects I worked on during all of this, one of which I'll share on a new blog I made specifically for my projects & photographs.

[www.mk-creations.com]

It's not complete, so don't judge it just yet. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to have someone do a blog design for me.

By the way, the name "MallyKally Creations" came from my manager-slash-sister

 She used to call me "Kally" when we were little, none of us are really sure why. 

But the nickname stuck.

A few weeks ago, she sent me an e-mail with this great name & the super-cute slogan:

"Lovin' to create since 1988!"

At the time I wasn't creating anything except dirty diapers, but it's a crazy-awesome slogan so I love it! 

I figured I needed a different blog for just my personal stuff and then I'll link you to my projects from here. 

Not everyone - and I'm just guessing, here - wants to hear about my riveting personal life.

Who knew?

Moral of the story:

Our basement is awesome.

I have a new blog.

It's not 100 degrees outside.

Life is good.