Surround Sound

Growing up, my mother would sweep the floor in sections, so there would be small dirt piles around the kitchen and hallway while she was sweeping.  Invariably, my dad, or my sister or I would step in one of these piles and track the dirt back around the room.  Watching where you step takes on a whole new meaning in our floor-less bathroom, where if you don’t take care to step on the joists, you’ll put a foot through the living room ceiling. 

What does this have to do with surround sound? Mostly it was something I was thinking about as I insulated the floor of the bathroom, being sure to watch my step. Why was I putting insulation in the floor of the bathroom? Two reasons: first, in the interest of privacy, it’s nice to insulate around toilet drain lines since the bathroom sits directly above the living room; second, the surround sound system.  In previous posts, I talked about the insulation we used (Rockwool) and how we insulated the living room ceiling so that Shawn could watch horror movies while Amy sleeps.  

While we still had access to the joist space, the plan was to install ceiling mounted rear channel speakers to complete the Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. We ran all the speaker cable before drywall was installed.  One of the speakers was easy to install from the bathroom where we had access to the joist space and ceiling below. The other speaker was a little trickier.  We left the unattached cable in the ceiling, took a picture of it’s location and installed the drywall.  Using the picture, we were able to locate the general placement of the cable, Shawn cut a hole in line with the other speaker and as luck would have it, the cable fell right down through the hole. Perfect. That is what good planning ahead will get you. And now, as Shawn put it, we can have very realistic explosions in the house while Amy sleeps.  Great. Or we could enjoy a movie night together – what are your favorite movies to watch in surround sound? Leave a comment!