When I was house-hunting thirteen years ago, one of the selling points of our chosen home was the finished basement, with a partially-divided large room that would become a fixture for entertaining guests. In the first decade of raising a family here, the room has served us well, especially being able to fill the game room with fun activities and sports memorabilia. The Movie/TV Room however, had changed very little after moving the original sectional that was previously in our townhome living room. The most recent update was adding the nursery leather recliner.
Last summer, however, an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up fell into my lap. As a (very bad) habit, I troll estate sale auction sites for deals, when I found a set of 6 theater room-style recliners that were in great shape, especially when you consider it’s going to a family with tweens and doesn’t want to stress about keeping them pristine. Including the trailer rental, I was able to get all six of them them home for less than $125.
In order to maximize the theater experience, I wanted the back three chairs to be elevated over the heads of the front three. My sister, Christina, and brother-in-law, Tony, gifted me with the lumber (and Tony’s help) in building a platform, using 2×8’s and floor-graded plywood. We cut the wood in the garage and built it right downstairs, then painted it and used adhesive panel carpet for the surface. I applied some led-strip lighting under the small overhang for the finishing touches.
Now that we constructed the platform, we had the excruciating task of carrying the chairs downstairs and setting up the room. Attaching that final chair was a rewarding experience, but it quickly became apparent that the TV, previously on a stand, needed to be mounted on the wall.
While we were at it, I also wanted to focus on darkening the room, replacing the TV-backed maroon wall with Tuxedo Black, as well as some black-out curtains.
The space was starting to come together, but something was still missing. While watching movies is great, I also wanted the room to serve as an entertainment hub in our house during sporting events: “sports bar mode.” To enable this mode, I installed an HDMI splitter and threaded a long HDMI cable behind the wall so that it comes out behind the TV in the game room. This enables the TVs to be in sync when watching sporting events through streaming (both TVs are typically in sync when we watch over-the-air broadcasts).
We could comfortably seat six in the theater chairs, then two more at the bar, but I went back on the hunt to see if I could find a bar-height table behind the theater seating so that people could eat, play a game, or have seat extra people. It took months of trolling Marketplace and Estate Auctions, but I finally found two small tables that fit the bill. Shannon was kind enough to help me get them down the stairs and set up. They are the perfect height to go behind the recliners.
The last piece of the puzzle was building a candy wall. I found the idea on Pinterest and bought a floating frame, peg board, and shelf hooks. I built it over the weekend and had the surprise ready for the girls when they returned on Monday. I’m lucky that the girls like the idea of candy more than the actual candy. They’ve held to the rules we’ve established about only having candy while watching movies and sports.
After over six months of active work (and years of dreaming), here is how the room has turned out (so far).
