We finished construction on our custom-built house 18 months ago. Being a novice at the endeavor, I was surprised at how many details need to be addressed during during the construction phase, rather than the design phase. Among these was a large lower story room in our walk-out basement. We had designed this to be a “media room” to be used by our kids and us together. However, as the plan developed, this was a problem area. It was going to be a huge, square, basement room with a terrible echo. Enter Mario Arts.
Our general contractor first suggested we contact Mario for his expertise in home theater design and construction. Although we hadn’t planned this as a dedicated theater room, the suggestion made sense. From our first contact with Mario, I was impressed with his abundance of talent. He is part designer, part cabinet-maker, part acoustic expert, part psychologist, and mostly artist. He evaluated our project and then evaluated us, including a battery of tests that both my wife and I completed to understand our personalities as well as our design and color preferences. He then embarked on the design phase of our media room. This resulted in a mock-up, doll-house-size structure that replicated his sketches. Although nervous about the cost after all of this effort, we proceeded by asking for an official bid. It wasn’t cheap, and it shouldn’t have been. It was, however, affordable and worth every penny. Mario carried through with the construction, which he does himself. This included an acoustic drop ceiling with extensive lighting effect, as well as soji screen pocket doors to hide the screen for our projector system. Once the system was installed by the A/V experts, the end result was remarkable. We’ve enjoyed it immensely.
Mario is, in our experience, an interesting and trustworthy contractor who has a special talent and passion for what he does. He was professional and thorough, as well as fun to get to know. The only issue throughout the project was a delay of a few weeks when he was injured working at another job. Since he works alone, no one was available to assist in completing our project. We just had to wait for his arm injury to improve. I can highly recommend Mario Arts for any home theater or media room project that justifies the special talent he has.
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