Brooke Pearl Paul Versluis

Related Articles

300

• Watching Your Water Usage
• Swim Safe
• Tuning In
• Quiet Riot
• Not Your Mother's Kitchen

Public theaters can offer uncomfortable seating, stale popcorn, an automated recording telling you to turn off your cell phone and strangers talking during the movie — but these aren’t things you’ll encounter when entering the Smiths’ home. Actually, John and Tamika’s home theater is quite the opposite. “It simulates going to the movies, but  it’s even better,” Tamika says.

As guests walk up the black granite steps in the basement to enter the theater, which is 13 fi-feet wide x 23-feet deep, a light shines through an extended glass panel on the door to display the Dallas Cowboys’ logo etched in the glass — John’s been a lifelong Cowboy’s fan — while a  popcorn machine waits beside the entrance. “It’s a place to watch movies and the Cowboys, which was a huge deal,” says Jim Evans, design sales and co-owner of Applause Custom Sight & Sound. Once inside, it’s everything you’d want in a completely dedicated home theater. “I wanted a place you can escape to in the house, have friends over and watch the game or have a dinner-and-a-movie party,” John says. With this being his third home theater, he knew exactly what he wanted. Each past theater had a theme, and this one is none other than the man’s room, which is OK with Tamika. “I’m not your typical woman; I love all the same things he loves,” she says. “I’m a sports fan, and I’m there before him on Sundays.”

Eight comfortable, fully reclining Microfiber seats custom-made by Pullman Manufacturing, and each with its own cup holder for the beverage of choice, face a 100-inch cinema projection screen — now that’s top-of-the-line entertaining. In the back of the theater, the extended bar creates four additional seating options and allows people to come and go as they please. The mahogany wood panels on the walls contain acoustic panels that absorb any reflection that comes in the room, as well as hide all the side speakers and keep the sound — and deep base — surrounding theater guests at all times. “When  someone’s walking in an alley [during a movie], and someone else is walking behind them, you feel like someone is right behind you, which is what the producer was trying to create,” John says. With nine speakers, the room features surround sound to the fullest. It’s also hooked up to a distributed audio system so music  can be played throughout the home.

Lighting, which includes spotlights, rope lighting and sconces, is controlled by a six-button key pad; when the movie is paused, lights come on; when it’s played, the lights dim. The key pad is situated next to a whole-house touch-screen control panel. To top it off, the ceiling “has big, fun soffits that are faux-painted and are more for aesthetics than sound,” Jim says. “It divides the room into two different spaces,” making it seem larger than it is. “When you go in and shut the door, you forget you’re sitting in a house in Overland Park,” John says.

The screen in the theater room is also hooked up with DVR, so if it’s not game day and golf season is over,  John and Tamika will catch up on their favorite TV shows: “24,” “The Unit,” “Shark,” “Boston Legal,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Dancing with the Stars.” They also have hook-ups for video games, Xbox and a computer, in case one of them needs to practice a presentation. “You name it, it pretty much has anything in there you’d want to do,” Jim says.

For now, an elaborate Super Bowl party is next on the Smiths’ entertaining list. Right outside of the home theater is the rest of the “whole entertaining space,” as Tamika calls it. After a movie or during a commercial break, guests can waltz out to the game room for air hockey, darts, billiards and their own 50-inch flat-screen TV. The full bar, with large stones and mahogany wood, is complete with a  refrigerator, ice maker and plenty of spirits.

With or without guests, the Smiths enjoy the comforts of their home theater. “What I love is to be able to fully recline, kick back and relax,” Tamika says. “It truly is like our own corner of the world, and we get to experience all of that with our closest friends or just by ourseleves in total privacy.”