Introduction
 How
many times have you been sitting in a friends super new Home Theatre room
and been shown everything from skyscraping stacks of power amps to voice
controlled dimmers and electric screens or even real live bunny girls
serving pop corn & drinks? But no matter how much sexy electric
leather there is, something is still missing from the room? Well
then Electric Velvet may be what's missing! Take any
room and cover the walls with beautiful red velvet curtains that go floor
to ceiling and wall to wall, even if you just have a simple TV in the
room, people will always say "Wow, this feels like a real theatre,
what are we going to watch?". The reason it feels like a
real theatre is simply that it looks and sounds like a real theatre and
this transformation can be done for very little cost compared to the rest
of the rooms contents. In a multi purpose room, just add electric
curtain tracks, and your ready for anything! In my opinion, this
addition to my Home Theatre equipment has added more value to the entire
system than any other part of the room or its equipment. It gives a
whole new look & feel for watching films and improves the sound more than
you could imagine!
The Velvet
  The
required supply of velvet is as close as your local
Joann
Fabric and craft store. The velvet comes in several colors and
if you really wanted to go to town, the electric curtain tracks described
below can accommodate two sets, so you could change the color at the touch
of a button! Ruby Red is the usual classic color found in most all
theatres so this is what we have. The velvet normally goes for about
$25 a
yard where that yard in length is 48" wide. Once finished, the
curtains need to be gathered by at least 1.5 times or more, so the most
width you would have in the finished curtain is about 32". So if
your ceilings are 8ft in height, you would need about 3 yards of material
for each drop including the hem at the bottom and the and the tape at the
top. So if you had a 20ft long wall to cover, you would need 8 drops
of 3 yards each which is 24 yards at about $600.00 plus the cost of making
them. Well, if you keep a lookout, every now and then Joann has a
sale and you can get this stuff for just $14.99 a yard!
The Tracks
 The
curtain tracks that I use are Makita and these are the best there are.
Click
here to see some examples. In most cases, the ones to get are
the
18 foot single tracks. This will be enough length for most rooms
and you can always get
extra tracks. These things are made with the same quality as
Makita power tools and the ones I have had running for over eight years
now are still working with no problems. You can just point the
remote in the direction of the motor that you want to run or you can get a
contact closure interface that can be connected to X10 or any other
home automation system, or of course you can cable out infrared senders to
each motor. To be honest, while I have some significant home
automation equipment, I have never felt the need to go any further than
just pointing the remote at the curtain I want to operate. If you
hit the button and pan it across the room, each motor starts in turn and
it looks real cool! Once installed, the motors are hidden behind the
curtains and the remote control just goes straight through.
The Lights
 To
improve the effect even more, if you build a pelmet under which to fix the
tracks,
rope light can also be added just inside the bottom lip of the pelmet
to shine on the velvet. This looks really cool and if you add an X10
dimmer, you can lower the brightness when the projector screen comes down
for a real Theatre Mode in the room.
Pictures
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