Design Help (Dedicated Theater Room Construction)

[Dustin B]

It's taken over 6 months, but after a few more sheets of drywall go up in my new detached garage behind the house, the next item on the list of renos for the house I bought last June is the dedicated theater room. It presents a bit of a challenge in what I want to accomplish.

Here is a picture of the outside of the house (new shingles, windows and siding are this summers project after the theater room is done). This is a picture of the east side of the house.

House Pic

There are currently two bedrooms above the garage. There is a hallway in the middle of the house that has stairs at the end which go up to the two bedrooms. There is no access to the attached garage from inside the house. I am going to knock down the wall between the two bedrooms and make them the theater room. However I also want to get rid of the oustide doors into the attached garage, make access to it from inside the house and turn it into a master suite with a 3 piece bath and walk in closet.

When the house was originally constructed, the attached garage and two bedrooms above did not exist. So there is a 4 foot foundation wall above floor level on the south wall of the garage. Also directly below the hallway to the bedrooms is a load baring wall that the joists for the main house sit on running east/west. HAVC for the two bedrooms above the garage enters the garage next to this load baring wall through the concrete, goes straight up and runs along the ceiling.

The interior dimensions of the addition are 25.5' in the east/west plain, 11.5' in the north/south plain and both rooms are roughly 8' tall.

So any plan for access to these two rooms must not require cutting into the load baring wall or the concrete foundation. Also the bathroom for the master suite has to be in the south west corner of the current attached garage for plumbing reasons.

Here are some rough CAD drawings of the best plan myself and a few of my buddies could come up with.

South East View
South View
North East Under View
Straight On From the East

The ceiling for the down stairs isn't present and the small stub wall for the up stairs isn't present. The landing will be made just wide enough to allow a 32" door where each set of stairs start on it.

The landing is roughly 6' wide (opens 1.5' on either side of the hallway) and 7' tall (will be made slightly taller if I can make the landing one step down from the hallway and not block the HAVC). There is just under 3' from the end of each set of stairs and the north wall. It leaves just over 10' to the west of the stairs for the bathroom. The second row seating riser is 1' tall and 4' deep. Which leaves 4.5' from the riser to the stairs for the first row of seating. The screen wall has been placed 5' into the room and will house all equipment and an infinite baffle sub.

Reasoning for this layout was the space between the screen and the seating doesn't need to have anything on it, but the current attached garage can't be made the theater because then these stairs would block the screen. Both sets of stairs are north/south as this means no 90 degree corners will need to be made in the landing to get stuff into either room.

Any suggestions / potentially better ideas from those smarter than I?

[Paul H]

Dustin,

Two thoughts come to mind. First, the floor opening for the stairs will need to be surrounded by a guardrail, which may impede the view to the screen, and be distracting even if it isn't directly in the way.

Second, while it's generally a good idea to leave load-bearing walls alone, the comment about not being able to cut into it at all isn't exactly true. The wall can be cut if it is properly temporarily braced during the renovation, and the opening is properly permanently reinforced to maintain the support strength for the trusses above.

Notice I said properly. If cutting into the load-bearing wall creates a good option/layout for you and you decide to go that way, spend a few hundred on an engineer to have this detailed (properly).

[---k---]

Dustin,
Oddly, your photos are getting blocked by my work's filtering software, so I can't look at them.

I'm going to agree with Paul here about the load bearing walls and foundation not being untouchable. Anything is possible with the right techniques. I'm a structural engineer, so I'll be glad to give you some limited advice.

Without seeing the photos and drawings, I can't say much else. I'll look when I get home tonight.

[Dustin B]

I guess I should have worded that differently. I understand that the foundation and the load baring wall can be touched. I'd want an engineer's advice and planning before I did. Not sure if some of it would be something I'd attempt on my own or not. However to make that work would require cutting into a room on the main floor, and a room downstairs and would take time/cost past what I can afford.

After more thought I'm starting to rethink it being an option to keep the landing as wide as the hallway and do a stairwell straight up to the theater and down the south wall to the east into the bedroom. As a removeable railing can be done on that stair well that should make it relatively easy to get bedroom type items into and out of the room.

For the upstairs to the theater room, I know it won't pass a code requirement, but I was planning on making a stub wall at a bit above knee level for a 6' tall person. It will prevent any adult I have over from taking a header and no kids to worry about at present.

I'll gladly take any advice you can provide --k--