Home Theater #5 - Soffits

I made quite a bit of progress on installing the soffits in our theater room. These will create a tray ceiling effect and hold recessed lights around the walls.

Here are two pictures of walls and ceiling before starting...


The HVAC and one of the main structural beams are in this soffit. I am adding lights and making it look more integrated into the overall plan.


After putting all the layout marks on the surfaces, I started by nailing 2x3's to the ceiling . I put poly glue on these, and once in place I added 3" screws about every 3 feet. This might be over-kill, but I don't want these ever coming loose.

I like using 2x3's for this. They are straighter than 2x2's and are quite a bit lighter than 2x4's.


Once these where in, I hung OSB off of them. These are only stapled in place. When I put the sheetrock on, the nails will go through the OSB to the wood.


I needed to run the video cable (RBG) from the tuner to the projector, through the soffit. I decided to put it in a 2" PVC conduit. If I ever need to change the cable (probably to HDMI at some point) this will make it much easier. I needed to get this into place before putting the bottom of the soffits in.


This assembly is the for the bottom of he soffit. Once put together, I just slide and nail it in.


Here is one of the bottom units with the recesssed light holders in place.


Here is the soffit bottom put into place - nailed to studs and stapled to OSB.


I was able to get about 80% of this framed today. I will finished it out tomorrow and wire the lights.

Here is the final floor plan...

Adding a Tray Ceiling to the Master Bedroom

The entire house has standard 8 ft ceilings: no variation, crown molding, etc. Pretty typical for a 1970's ranch house.

In our last home, and in many of the "inspiration" houses we have looked at, the master bedroom has an elevated tray ceiling (also called a box ceiling) - so we decided to add one. My first thoughts were on how we could raise the ceiling and get a 9 foot center. That would have meant re-engineering the roof trusses, tearing everything out, and doing some signficant refraiming. We like the look, but it was not worth that level of effort.

In a number of the new homes they are building in the area, they are sticking with an 8 foot ceiling upstairs, and creating the tray with 2x6 soffits. I decided this was a pretty simple way to get it done. Since we already had a ceiling up, I built the units out of 2x4, plus an additional 1x3 to function as a flange for attaching to the ceiling trusses.

Here is a cross-section:

These were glued and screwed together, then attached to the ceiling as shown here. The 1x3 flanges allowed for easy nailing to get them up there. I added 2 1/2 screws on both the flange and the outsides. In addition, I used construction adhesive to help minimize movement later on.

I added insulation to these. The top plate of a room's framing is one of the largest surface areas with no insulation, allowing for "thermal bridging". The heat travels through the wood much easier than insulation. Putting insulation here stops the bridging, plus adds additional ceiling R-value. I took the vapor barrier off, and drilled holes in the ceiling sheetrock to stop condensation from building up.

Here is the sheetrock:

Here is the final product:

We like in the added design interest this creates, plus it helps to visually "lift" the center part of the ceiling.