The Bollywood Room

The Bollywood Room is done! This was a VERY large project. Building a home theater is certainly not anything new, but somewhere, somehow, I got it into my head that I wanted a Bollywood room. I think this is left over thoughts of wanting a Turkish room that never materialized. But in hindsight, it makes perfect sense - create a home theater celebrating the country that has the biggest film industry in the world. David and I quickly realized that we were in over hour heads with the technology of it all. We shopped around and decided to go with AV Transformations to help us make decisions and purchase equipment. We also had to figure out how to decorate the room, and once again we thought we were in over our heads. Eventually, with help from Sis and ABC, we found ourselves not needing a special decorator. Whew!

Here's the layout of the room.

And these were the main colors and styles we were going for.

First, let's talk technology. For anyone that's ever tried to plan a home theater, my heart goes out to you. I was practically paralyzed with endless decisions. The audio/visual knowledge that you have to accumulate to make a simple decision is staggering. I constantly changed my mind as to what we wanted. David originally wanted a plasma screen, but I convinced him that front projection is the way to go. We are DEFINITELY happy with the quality of the system. I won't go into all the details of the system. We got a JVC D-ILA projector since it is supposed to match real-life color most accurately. We went with a DENON receiver and DVD player and a 5.1 surround sound system. Yes, it's all as impressive as you would want it to be. And we had a gazillion cables run through the walls.

Here's the screen. David is going through the left closet which has our DVDs. The right closet has all of the A/V equipment.

A closeup of the right closet.

This is the projector on the opposite wall of the screen. It is mounted to the wall above and behind the sofa and chair.

Now let's talk design. David and I went to look at furniture and fabric samples several times with no luck. I liked silk designs - he said no silk because it stained too easily. I showed him busy patterns - he didn't like busy. We were going nowhere. Then my sister came to visit and while I was at work, the two of them went to ABC. David called me all excited about the silk paisley pattern that they picked out. I was baffled, but ultimately happy that my sister convinced him where I had failed. And everything is uber-comfortable.

Here's a snapshot of the sitting area.

A nightstand in between the sofa and chair.

The chair. It's soooo comfortable.

The coffe table is from India. It was made from an old window shutter.

Now on to lighting. This was a bit of a sopa opera. We got a Morrocan-style chandelier a few months ago for the Turkish room. We thought it would go well in the Bollywood room, so David spent a couple of hours moving it. After a couple of weeks, we realized it didn't go, and David moved it back up stairs. On a trip to ABC, before we had planned anything in the room, we got four lights. Two of them are smaller, pomegranate-shaped lights that we thought would go near the screen on each side, and two larger chandeliers. And best of all: they were CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP!!! At one point we thought that we were being too extravagant getting four lamps, but at the prices that we got for them, we would have been fools to not grab them while we had the chance. They are nice, but we later saw the PERFECT chandelier and it actually goes well with the ones we already bought.

You'll notice the shutters on the windows. These block out all external light so we can watch a movie during the day.

The main chandelier

Above the chair

Above the sofa

And this ended up not making the cut. How sad.

When we finished the room, but up new lights, etc, my friend Sara came to visit and her first comment hit me to the core with my greatest fear: It Was Too Tasteful. So the next weekend, I went and got some artwork for the walls, a new window topper, and some more pillows. It's getting closer in that it's cluttered to start to feel authentic. I'm sure we will eventually get it cluttered to the point of offensive - at which point I'll be REALLY happy.

The topper over the entrance.

Our sideboard, with a carving from India (via Uma, one of my co-workers), and some brass sculptures from David's parents.

Some elephant sculptures

Artwork

A beautiful ganesh carving

More artwork