The sweetest words you can hear from the wife...

jar155

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"Sure, I guess it's ok if you want to take down that wall."

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I ran out and bought a sledgehammer, a 64 oz. drink from 7-11, and came home with bustin' stuff on my mind. My arcade room isn't that large, but I do manage to fit quite a few games in there. The room is actually a bedroom, but it's a large one. the shape of it is rectangular, but there's a really lame walk-in closet that eats up a bunch of usable space due to the placement of it. I do have 3 games in the closet (Ms. Pac, Spy Hunter, DK), but if I take it down it will open up the room a whole lot more. Below is a pic of the layout. After I tear down the walls, it will be just a game room. If we ever decide to sell the home, I'll just put in a normal closet, as pictured in the same image. The scale is off below, as the closet actually takes up a bit more space than it shows. The part labeled lame space is just that. It's lame, because if you put anything there, you block the entrance to the closet.

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I'll post some WIP pictures tonight, but I've already knocked out the sheetrock and have started taking down the framing. The toughest part hasn't been the demolition, but rather the moving around of arcade games and pinball machines. By the end of the week I should have it all patched up and pretty with a properly shaped game room.

The biggest bonus for doing this isn't so that the shape is easier to work with, but it opens up the room so much more that I can easily fit a few more pins and arcade cabinets in there. Time to hit the local classifieds hard again. :D
 
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Just make sure those walls are not load-bearing walls or you could have troubles. I doubt that they are, but well you never know.

I learned something today though. Never ask a bank for a loan to build a game room which is 1,000 SF bigger than your house. They laughed me right back out of the bank so plan B came into thought about the same time...Rob said bank and then forget the loan, but then I would have to deal with the cops and jail.

Anyways good luck with the new project!
 
Just make sure those walls are not load-bearing walls or you could have troubles. I doubt that they are, but well you never know.

I learned something today though. Never ask a bank for a loan to build a game room which is 1,000 SF bigger than your house. They laughed me right back out of the bank so plan B came into thought about the same time...Rob said bank and then forget the loan, but then I would have to deal with the cops and jail.

Anyways good luck with the new project!

Have you looked at the building code in your area? I know where I live you can't build a garage (basically what we're talking about) larger than your house.
 
That is cool. Have to disagree about the title though.

I would much rather hear "Lay back honey, I'll do the rest."
This of course would be followed by her.....mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, fixing all my games, etc.

What, you were thinking I meant something else? :D
 
The walls aren't load-bearing. In fact, the previous owner of the home put them in well after the rest of the basement was finished. I don't know why in the world he didn't just put the door facing the rest of the room, as the entrance caused a bunch of unusable space, but I'm putting things right for both my game room needs and for the room itself if we ever need to convert it back to a normal bedroom.
 
Well, here are some pics of the progress. You'll notice that a few games are still in the room, simply because I already filled our storage room with some games, and there's no way that I'm hauling any up to the stairs to the garage, so what's in there is going to get dusty, but I'll clean them up real nice when I'm done.

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So right now I have a big mess. I need to get some sheetrock cut, patch up the ceiling and walls, patch up the carpet, and repaint. The extra space on that side of the room is going to be very nice. I'm going to start a pinball row in that corner and line them up along the right side wall. From there arcade games will line the walls around the room.

The fun part is over, now the real work begins.
 
I learned something today though. Never ask a bank for a loan to build a game room which is 1,000 SF bigger than your house. They laughed me right back out of the bank so plan B came into thought about the same time...Rob said bank and then forget the loan, but then I would have to deal with the cops and jail.
Your mistake was telling them the intended purpose was a game room. A more believable story would be "kids / in-laws / parents / moving in with us".

Bill
 
and here I always thought the sweetest words a wife could say were " you know honey , I have been thinking and we have a 20 year old open minded girl at work, I was thinking of asking her to join us one night."
 
I'm going to have to cut sheetrock, mud it, tape it, and then try my best to blend in the texturing.

I had to cut a bunch of holes in my basement ceiling when I ran wiring for recessed lighting. I put back the panels I cut out and tried to blend them as good as possible. They still show if you look at the area.

The best way to hide the area is to either scrape the ceiling as mentioned or add more texture to the entire ceiling.
 
I'm going to have to cut sheetrock, mud it, tape it, and then try my best to blend in the texturing.

Blending it is all but impossible, as mentioned. If you're going to do "popcorn" you probably won't have to do much scraping but I think it would be cool to recreate the knock-down effect that you've already got. It might even be cool to do a one foot stub wall in the ceiling or something along the line you've got. Then you won't have to spray the ceiling, though that's a lot of work in itself.

Looks good! I'm sure the room feels twice as big now.
 
Woah, you just gave me an idea, Lindsey. I'll do the ceiling stub wall (makes me wish I didn't tear out the framing now) and put some track lighting in there. It could be nice for working on pins in the room and I can just shine a spot of light on the area. Hmmm, I could probably put a couple of speakers in there too...
 
Woah, you just gave me an idea, Lindsey. I'll do the ceiling stub wall (makes me wish I didn't tear out the framing now) and put some track lighting in there. It could be nice for working on pins in the room and I can just shine a spot of light on the area. Hmmm, I could probably put a couple of speakers in there too...

That's a great idea! I've actually done that in 2 different houses that I've owned. Both times it was in the header of a wall I created a pass-through in but the concept is the same. I used 3" halogen pot lights and they fit nicely between the framing. Obviously you'll want to measure whatever you're going to use :)

It is really an awesome effect. Add a dimmer and you're in business. On one of the two projects where I did this I had to use florescent bulbs because the 50W Halogen lamps gave off too much heat. If I had know this in advance I would have vented the area better. Something to consider...

Yeah... sucks that you already tore out the framing but that's how it goes sometimes. What really sucks is that you cut out the ceiling drywall seam but you should be able to patch that without respraying the ceiling.
 
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and here I always thought the sweetest words a wife could say were " you know honey , I have been thinking and we have a 20 year old open minded girl at work, I was thinking of asking her to join us one night."

I'm glad to know I am not the only person that had the same idea go through his mind when he first read the thread's subject
 
I always thought the sweetest words from the wife would be "of course I will swallow, honey."

Either way, 'grats on the extra gameroomage. :D
 
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