Living Room Theater Build – Hidden Screen, LEDs, Motorized Blinds

Two months ago, my friend and I started building these built-in style cabinets in his family room, but after that weekend he got busy, and then I got busy, and they’ve just been sitting here unfinished for the last seven weeks. But today he went out of town on a family vacation so I snuck into his house and I’m going to surprise him by not only finishing the cabinets, but giving the room an entire makeover to turn it into the ultimate family room home theater with LED lighting, a fully recessed motorized projector screen from Elite Screens, a Valerion Pro 2 Triple Laser projector, and some new smart shades from SmartWings.

Finishing the Built-ins

Step one was to get some face framing on the cabinets to cover up the ugly, unfinished plywood edges.  I’m no pro woodworker, but I’ve made my fair share of shelving, and I always use primed 1×2’s for face framing. I started with the longest vertical pieces so the unfinished end grain would be up against the ceiling. Next, I cut each of the trim pieces to its own slightly unique size to account for the unevenness of the 60-year-old walls, and on the right side I also had a fuse panel to contend with, so I notched that face frame to go around the electrical box.

Then I moved on to the cabinet doors that I made out of MDF and pre-painted the day before. I’d only ever used Euro-style hinges on premade furniture from IKEA, so I bought a jig from Amazon to drill the hinge pockets in the back of the doors, which was worth every penny since I basically had no idea what I was doing and the jig made everything line up perfectly.

Lastly, I put on the drawer faces. For those I like to mount the drawer boxes first, then line up the faces exactly where I want them and punch a few finish nails through the front to hold them in place while I add screws from the inside. I also had to do some notching on the drawer faces to account for that electrical box and the base molding. At the end of day 1, the cabinets themselves were basically done.

LED Lighting Install

On day 2 I moved onto LED lighting. Usually for a built-in cabinet like this I’d recommend using analog, non-addressable LEDs since they tend to get brighter and have a better color rendering index, but because I’m also installing a projector and screen and because my friend loves using his current Govee immersion system, I wanted him to have the option of using all the cabinet lighting as a screen extension. I went with WS2814 12V RGBW addressable strips that are controllable in groups of three but still have a nice dedicated 3000K white LED with a respectable CRI of 92.1.

The first thing I needed to figure out for this specific install was whether I wanted to mount the LEDs on the back of the face frame facing the wall or on the bottom of the shelf facing down. Every installation is going to be a little different, but for these cabinets I felt like mounting them to the face frames pointing backwards generated a more even lighting effect and also kept the LED strips completely hidden.

I also wanted to keep the Gledopto controller, power supply, and wiring hidden. My friend has an AV receiver that’s going to be on the bottom shelf with a shelf above it to keep all the speaker wires and power cords hidden, so that was the perfect spot to run all the wires from.

I used 18 gauge 3 core white wire that blends in well with the cabinets when it’s hot glued behind the face frames. I ran each of the three zones separately, starting with the center section, running my wire from the bottom shelf to the right corner of the floating middle section where I soldered on the LED strip in place, and whenever I cut LED strips to length I like to sacrifice one section of LEDs in between segments so I have a full set of pads to solder onto at each side.

Don’t forget with addressable LED strips you always need to make sure that you’re paying attention to the direction of the strip with the arrow pointing away from where you are soldering indicating the data will be flowing down the strip from your connections.

There are a lot of ways to solder LED strips, but after years of doing this, I’ve settled on a quick three step process that seems to work perfectly. Step one is to pre-tin the pads on the LED strip with a nice bead of solder. Step 2 is to take your wires and strip off about a quarter inch of insulation, twist the wire, and then tin the wires with solder until they won’t absorb any more. After that, trim the ends of the wire so they are no bigger than the solder pad on the strip and are relatively even with each other, and then hold the wire against the solder pad on the strip and press down your soldering iron until the solder on both the wire and solder pad melt. Then remove the heat and hold it for a few seconds as it cools. If you want you can add a dab of hot glue, or some heat shrink tubing over the connections, but for an indoor cabinet install like this it’s not really necessary.

Next, just pull the LED’s adhesive backing off, and stick it to your cabinets. If you’re concerned about the strips or wiring coming loose, you can use these super inexpensive adhesive clips for some extra support like I did under the floating middle section, but for the rest of the install I used hot glue to pin and hide the wires.

For the side shelving I ran the wire back behind the drawers. As I’ve said I like to wire manage with hot glue, using the low setting if your glue gun has it, which lets the glue set up a little quicker and doesn’t burn your fingers as much, and I ran that wire all the way to the edge of the bottom shelf before punching it up through.

What’s ended up happening is I had this wire coming up to the first shelf, then the LED strip runs all the way across, the data comes out the other side, comes up to the next shelf, runs back across, comes up on the side, and then runs back across at the top. I’m not going to bore you with all that soldering, but here’s how everything looks behind the face frames, nicely tucked out of the way, completely invisible from the front.

This is what the finished product looks like using just the 3000K white lights.

Then showing off some of the RGB effects in WLED.

Since these are addressable strips each shelf, and section can be individually controlled, and since we’re using WLED we’ll also be able to set up a screen mirroring system later using the E131 protocol.

Shelly Switch Install

The last thing I did on the 2^nd day was install a Shelly Plus 2PM behind the living room switch panel which gives me an input for each switch, and two output relays with smart control. The idea is to have the wall switch turn the LEDs on and off, which I’ll do by setting up an action on the Shelly web interface so that when the switch is toggled on it will send a URL to the LED controller’s IP address to toggle on the master power, which according to the WLED documentation just uses the flag T=1, and to turn it off I set up another action for when the switch is toggled off and send the same URL, but with T=0.

Recessed Motorized Projector Screen Install

At the beginning of day 3 I started one of the coolest parts of this project but for sure the hardest, the recessed motorized 100” projector screen from Elite Screens. The thing that made this difficult was the fact that the overhang on either side of the screen housing was slightly less than half an inch, so there wasn’t a lot of room for error when cutting a hole in the ceiling. After taking some measurements of the screen, I started marking out the positioning on the ceiling.  

Step 1 was to use my DeWalt laser measuring tape and laser the length from one wall to the other wall in front of the built-ins, which is 136 inches. Half of 136 inches is 68 inches, which I measured from the middle of the room to a side wall and marked it on the floating center console unit. Then I rotated the laser measuring tape upwards and marked the ceiling. That marked the center point of the room and also marked the front of the console unit so that the screen comes down and is almost flush with the front of the console.

I wasn’t 100% what was in the soffit, but from previous conversations with my friend, I didn’t think it was much. I made an exploratory cut on my center mark line with a drywall saw. I thought I might find just a few ceiling joists running longways, but instead I found a bunch of horizontal bracing that I was pretty sure was nonstructural and just used to mount drywall. But it meant I was definitely going to have to get in the ceiling.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any attic access to this part of the house, so my only option was to cut a person-sized hole in the ceiling, revealing mostly what I was expecting, which was 2×4 blocking toe-nailed to the 2×6 ceiling joists to hang drywall. So, I added a 2×4 top plate to each of the existing 2x4s and then used a laser line to mark a conservative cutout for the screen, removed all the drywall I could, and then used a reciprocating saw with a 4” blade to cut the old 2x4s without cutting my new top plates. At the end of day 3 it was clear that the screen was going to be a two-day project, but I did succeed in cutting a big ugly hole in my friend’s ceiling.

At the start of day 4 I called in my wife to help me dry fit the screen. As I said I was extremely conservative with the initial cutout since there’s only a ½” lip on the screen itself, so it took us a few attempts and some shaving of the drywall and 2×4’s, but we finally got the screen to fit all the way into the ceiling, so the next step was to figure out the mount for the screen.

For the space I was working with up there, none of the installation options that came with the screen were great. But there was one where you can hang the screen from all-threads. I mounted a trimmed 2×4 over the ceiling joists and then hung a bracket so that the all-threads would come down, allowing me to bolt it in from the bottom. I like this method because then you can adjust the height of the screen after you put it in. So, I needed to mount the 2×4 to the drywall bracing I put in yesterday and then cut the all-threads so that it’s the right height for this bracket.

I used an existing electrical circuit that previously controlled the can lights in the soffit and left myself enough slack that I could wire the screen before putting it in the ceiling. I also used this existing hole in the wall that was for an old glass break sensor as an access panel to be able to get to the junction box and screen motor controller, which is required to set the lower limit for the screen.

I temporarily clamped the middle of the screen to hold it in place and then fastened the mounting plates over the 2×4’s that I put in the ceiling, and then I used the long extension socket that was included with the screen kit to snug up the bolts so that the screen was flush with the drywall. The final step was to clip on the covers for the mounting area, and I also needed to come back and fill the gap between the screen and ceiling with caulk to get a more finished look. But the first test of the drop down was a huge success, and it came out basically exactly how I wanted.

Valerion Projector Install

Next step was moving on to the projector and there was a nice beam across the room to work with. There were two things I need to take care of. The first was needing power for the projector. There were lamps already installed in the beam, so I stole power from them. The second was I needed to run a very long HDMI cable from the projector to the back of the receiver in the built-ins. I got very lucky that my friend had installed height channel Atmos speakers in the corners of the beam, and he had already run the speaker wire through the wall and down to the floor. So, I tried to use a pull cord on the speaker wire and pull it down through the same hole he already made, and then I could pull the speaker wire and the HDMI cable back up the wall.

Or at least that was the plan, but for some reason the HDMI cable didn’t want to go up the wall cavity, so I ended up dropping it down from the top using the pull string, which worked fine except for the fact that I had to run all 50 feet through the wall doing it that way.

Shelly Remote Power Install

Next for the power, I mentioned that there was already wiring for these two hanging lamps, so I added an electrical box for a receptacle. But the obvious problem is that the wall switch then controls both the lamps and the projector power. So, I wired the lamps to a Shelly 1 Plus PM, then the second part of the puzzle was wiring a Shelly 1 Plus into the wall switch. The idea is that the Shelly in the switch box will remotely trigger the Shelly attached to the lamps, so it acts exactly the same as it used to but doesn’t ever cut power to the projector. I set this up in almost the exact same way as the WLED switch, but instead of the URL controlling WLED, I used the Shelly API to toggle the power to that remote Shelly 1 Plus PM based on the position of the wall switch.

I set the Valerion up 130” from the drop-down screen, which lets me use it at its maximum zoom level and gives the best contrast. Valerion does make a ceiling mount, but since I was mounting to this beam rather than the ceiling, I ended up using the Valerion gimbal mount and just drilled two holes in the mounting arms to screw it into the beam.

SmartWings Blackout Blinds Install

The last piece of the puzzle was blocking out the light from the three bay windows behind the couch because we are not using an ALR screen and watching a white screen during the day with three windows behind you is not a good thing. Even the TV had a huge amount of glare from the bay windows.

My solution was to order a huge 95” motorized blackout blind from SmartWings, which installed super quickly and easily with three quick release clips. Since the SmartWings blinds have internal batteries, I didn’t need to worry about hiding power wires. I also ordered the light blocking blackout edging so there would be the minimum possible light creeping onto the screen. Even though this part of the installation only took 45 minutes, it made one of the most dramatic differences in terms of overall picture quality on both the TV and the projector, so if your room has ambient light issues, blackout blinds should be at the top of your list.

So now there’s nothing left to do but sit back, relax and watch a few movies while I wait since they aren’t going to be home for another four days.

I’ll be back to normal review content in two weeks, but after the last two lawn mower and pool vacuum videos I needed a little break, and this was exactly what the doctor ordered. If you’re interested in any of this stuff for your home theater or living room, I’ve got links below to the exact products that I used.  If you enjoy this kind of content don’t forget to hit the thumbs up button, and let me know in the comments, and as always thanks for watching The Hook Up.