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Brian Murray
United States
Moorpark
California
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Ok calling all BGG'ers who've either built their own game room or converted an existing room into a game themed play area.
So my wife and I have agreed to renovate our garage into a game room because we need some extra living space in our small home and don't really use the garage except as an extra "put trash here" space.
The room is going to be approx. 15' x 18' after framing and drywall has been hung. What I'm looking for from you all is ideas on a couple things or better yet PICTURES!! There will be a walk space between the room and the exterior walls of the house for storage of tools, lawnmower, etc... So some things could be put here (like folding tables for gaming).
1) Where do you store all those games?? If space is somewhat of a luxury. One rule is they can't be visible when you walk into a room (lost that battle with the wife  ). The games also have to be stored inside this new room.
2) We also plan on setting up a video game station on one of the longer walls (hang a LCD TV with xbox360 and wii).
3) Custom game table ideas! - Looking for some custom game tables and this can be something I could build myself with the right ideas. Something that doesn't take up too much space and preferable could be folded up and put into a storage area.
As construction begins I'd like to post some pix of how it progresses. But right now any ideas you all could contribute would be GREAT! Better yet, links to cool sites where people have done something similar so I can visualize those ideas would be better.
Thanks!!
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James Bentley
United States
Cleburne
Texas
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Can I come live with you?
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Marshall Miller
United States
Medford
Massachusetts
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-What about hinged tables that fold out from the wall?
-You could also use some of the inter-wall space to put in recessed shelves/cabinets.
-Perhaps you could make long toychests with padding on top that would double as game storage and benches?
-What about an island with large cabinets for games?
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Tim West
United States
Nashville
Tennessee
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For shelving check around your local thrift stores. Good shelving for as little as 5$, at least in my area. Of course they'll be mismatched.
If you'd rather have uniform/new shelving. Plano makes some really sturdy grey plastic ones you can find at large hardware chains, dept. stores for around $30 for one like this: http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/produc....
As for tables, I bought two 72x30 folding tables by Cosco at Target for $40 each. They work very well, and it's quite easy to take one down for smaller games, and put them side by side for monsters. Very similar to this one: http://www.shoplet.com/office/vlgimages/MSMF2762.JPG
Also consider either buying a few 24"x36" poster frames and tearing the frames off to cover your boards with. An alternative would be plexiglass from a hardware store, but it's thickness may throw off alignment of counters/pieces with gameboards that have small spaces on them.
Anyhoo, grats on the new room, and hope you have tons of fun in it!
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Tim P.
United States
Thousand Oaks
California
Visit the Wargame Bootcamp guild
To mark the 60th Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
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can you host a game group ? 
we don't bite.... much 
congrats on a great addition to your house.
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Andrew Hayford
United States
Orlando
Florida
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For shelving, IKEA Billy bookcases with doors
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/rooms/workspace...
are very customizable.
I actually purchased a much larger cabinet (wider and deeper) from ikea with pull out drawers and doors to use as a game cabinent I love it though it did end up being a tad expensive.
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Steve Ignorant
Norway
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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I'm thinking of doing something in the same ally. Looking forward to the photos! Keep us updated.
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John Di Ponio
United States
Warren
Michigan
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Man...I wish I had pictures form my old house game room. The cool thing was I made shelves on the ceiling to hold the games. What that entailed was boxing the upper part of the wall and just drywalling the bottom and leaving the sides open. There were 1x2 strips inside the opening to support the drywall on the bottom and games above. Worked rather well. I have not figured out how to do my new gaming room yet....may do it in the basement ...not sure.
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Storage Ideas: I use an old wardrobe. But, if you are starting from scratch and you are going to have a big TV AND games, I would suggest the "Besta" shelving line from Ikea. I used these shelves for adding floor to ceiling storage along a wall in our home office. The shelves are deep, and there are multiple options for door sizes, types, etc. The shelves are considerably deeper than the Ikea "Billy" shelves too. You can even configure them to hold your TV and video game station, which would give a unified look to the room.
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Marshall Miller
United States
Medford
Massachusetts
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What about a shelf that runs around the top of the ceiling? That way games would be up and out of the way, yet easily accessable.
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Gordon Watson
United Kingdom
Banstead
Surrey
Beneath this mask there is an idea.....and ideas are bulletproof.
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Sounds very much like what we've done with our rear extension - which replaced the space taken by a knocked down garage. Ours is only 15'x11' but works great as a games come family film/video-game room - we also have equipped with a flat screen etc. Also there are no games on show (there are 2 exceptions - see below) but lots stored there.
- Instead of pictures I have hung/displayed my crokinole and carrom boards on the walls. Both are attractive wooden showpieces as well as good games. Saves on pictures and you get two games into the bargain.
- We used modern upright radiators to keep as much wall space free as possible to allow for the locating of table/seating units and narrow (6" depth) book/dvd/video game shelves - you live in California so radiators are perhaps not an issue.
- I bought a very nice card/games table - really the only good piece of furniture we own. This is great for many games just by itself - green baize one side and flips for chess the other. However it is situated next to a wall where it can be used as the base for a much larger table just by using a suitable wood-stained ply-wood board (4'x3'). Uses the wall for supports for stability - is good for wargames and 2-3 player games but not great for 4+ player games.
- I made two seating/storage units (my wife made the cushions etc) where the under-seat lifts to reveal storage for games and the fronts, which are concealed by doors, contain dvd's.
- I bought a trunk from the following http://www.storagetrunks.co.uk/size-l102-c-32.html?osCsid=6d...(it's UK based but something similar must be available in the US). Again my wife has covered this with some baize/suede fabric so it looks good. Stores loads of games (and I mean loads) but can be slid to the middle of the room and actually used for a games table - the inside of the lid also stores a plexi-glass sheet for paper-wargame maps.
Good luck with your games room - and don't forget, amid all the work, to actually play the games.
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United States
Saint Joseph
Michigan
I would do all the things I have ever dreamed of doing. I would love to become a professional whistler.I'm pretty amazing at it now, but I wanna get, like, even better. Make my living out of it.
Bffffttt, Pffffttt, Buuuuurtt........
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If you're wife isn't going to budge on the no games visible thing, then I think you need to put a BIG closet in there. Fill the closet with shelves and have either two doors that swing out, or make it a walk-in closet.
That or bookcases with doors (armoire).
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Rob "Bodhi" Wolff
United States
Vancouver
Washington
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One of the best game tables I have was constructed a decade ago for all of 60 dollars while we still lived in an apartment. It involves 2 wooden trestles from Ikea, a 4'x6' piece of thick MDF (medium density fibreboard) from Home Depot, and then some black automobile upholster picked up at a fabric store on remainder, complete with rubber backing and padding underneath. We glued the fabric on, folded the edges and stapled it with a giant staple gun.
The advantage is that you have a large, flocked black table with a lightly padded surface, the perfect size for big games, attractive enough in its own right, and then easy to take apart and store up against a wall. This was originally intended to be stored in a one-bedroom apartment between gaming sessions, but now it occupies space against one wall of our garage while not in use. It remains a stable of our game days, and still gets comments (although we should probably put new upholster on it).
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Another interesting decorating idea is to take "shadowboxes" from ikea or a craft store and put game piece in them, making little game-centric art installations that are perfect for a gamesroom. You could take an old game which is missing pieces, or a thrift-store fine, or even go crazy and find a cheap-but-pretty game (say, a carcassonne expansion) and use those as the foundation for a shadowboxed artpiece. Hang them in a staggered fashion along your wall to showcase your various games, and that will showcase the calibre of your gamesroom. Much nicer than simple posters or merely hanging maps on the wall.
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Eric
Canada
Gatineau
Quebec
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There was a thread where people where showing off their game room/game collection anyone kept a favorite on it? It had GREAT exemples of way to set up a game room.
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Thomas Gregory
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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Well I'm looking over you're game list and I'd guess you've got a couple cubic yards of games.
Try to group your games by size and plan out a good closet layout.
Maybe one end of your room could have double split doors, flip open the first set to give access to the video games and on either side have custom shelved game storage.
________________________
|GAMES|video games|GAMES|
|GAMES|video games|GAMES|
|GAMES|video games|GAMES|
|-------^-------- --------^-------|
|............................................|
|............................................|
|............rest of......................|
|...........the room...................|
|............................................|
|............................................|
(edit: stupid non-ascii character rendering)
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Brian Murray
United States
Moorpark
California
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This is great stuff guys I really appreciate it. I've scoured for the thread mentioned about game room setups and cannot seem to find anything. I might be searching for the wrong keywords though. Anyway, I really like the referal to IKEA... seems like some of these shelving units will work out nicely.
The recessed shelving is a GREAT idea especially if I hook up electrical to the space for the video consoles.
I plan on posting some starting pix next week and hopefully construction will begin the week after.
Keep those ideas coming people!! Especially links to sites or pix that are relevant...thanks to those who have contributed.
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Atomic wedgie
United States
Vancouver
Washington
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Here's a starting list to help you. It's pictures of people's collections. It will give you ideas on shelving/storage solutions.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/294070
Chaddyboy has the most impressive game room that I've seen pictures of and here's a thread on his room.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/958639#958639
hope this helps. I think that these are the threads referenced above.
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Helen Holzgrafe
United States
San Jose
California
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I know you did not mention this but please put very long and careful thought into the lighting design. We have used overhead track pendant lights with nice halogen bulbs that we got from Home Depot very cheaply. It sounds like this room might not have much light from outside, so you'll need glare free, but bright light from somewhere or it will just seem depressing to go out there.
Make sure also that your table(s) can have chairs on all sides. If you use tables that fold into the wall you are giving up one whole side of the table.
I like other's suggestions of Ikea as a place to get the shelving. You can get very nice deep shelves in various colors and woodtones with or without doors.
You can also get nice tables and chairs that match the shelving, too. They have a whole area where you just pick out your table top and the kind of legs you want and go for it. They look nice, too.
I also have had good luck (in the days before Ikea came to town) looking at used office furniture. We found some very nice, sturdy office tables and chairs that looked new.
-Helen
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Brian Murray
United States
Moorpark
California
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Ok I promised an update back when so here it is...
Game room construction began this last weekend. As you can see from the pix we were able to frame it all out in a single day. It's wired and ready for drywall which will go up this weekend.
The before pix....
And the after...
This one you can see the area for the recessed 42" LCD for our console gaming...
Hopefully I'll have some regular updates as this is starting to move along now...
I appreciate all the previous posters suggestions especially regarding IKEA. I'd never been to an IKEA before I made this thread. They had some decent stuff that the wife and I think will do nicely in this room.
Always looking for new ideas... so keep 'em coming!
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Adam Smiles
United States
Dedham
Massachusetts
The ratio of people to cake is too big.
Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...
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Looks good.
Here's the game storage in my finished basement:
The lattice work is my make-shift baby proofing.
I can't remember the name, but the shelves are the standard do it yourself shelves from Home Depot/Lowe's. I have thin hard plastic on top of the shelves to protect the games from the shelf wires.
For size purposes, the collection is about 300. Larger than yours, but you want to leave room to grow.
As far as hiding the games, if you use a whole instead of a closet, you could easily make a whole wall cover with bifold closet doors, or just run a curtain rod/dowel and have a floor length curtain to hide the games.
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Tim P.
United States
Thousand Oaks
California
Visit the Wargame Bootcamp guild
To mark the 60th Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
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blimey, looks great and its not even finished yet... do you need a local opponent / game room security guard ?
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We're all in this together
United States
Research Triangle Park
North Carolina
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I've always thought that if space was a luxury, I'd go with shelves every 5 vertical inches. I'd love to be able to have games mostly free of stacking, so I can pull games out and replace them without any fuss. Over the years, I've found that very few games do well on their side for long.
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Nicholas Vitek
United States
Houston
Texas
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For those interested in making their own game rooms and want a white board without the office supply white board cost, I highly recommend you head to Home Depot. They sell sheets of 8' x 4' white board material for 10.00 USD. It is called Melamine.
I purchased 2 sheets, a couple of 1' x 4' plans of wood, some wood glue, screws and brackets. I made a nice frame, glued the melamine to the frame, let it sit with weights and it makes a great pull out white board for gaming sessions.
You can even, later on, take it a step further and go back to Home Depot to pick up two small boxes of closet door tracking. Since each track piece contains 2 tracks, you can make a nice sliding wall of white board to get 8' x 8' that slides out of the way in a 4' x 8' space by attaching the track to a 2'x4' that is attached to the roof and then hanging the white board frame like a closet door. Works great and gets you note take space while sitting pretty much up against the wall(1cm gap).
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Brian Murray
United States
Moorpark
California
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So the next big step in my game room construction is done. We finished putting up drywall and doing all the electrical this past weekend. Also started finishing the drywall today. Things are turning out very nice ... thanks again for all the great feedback and messages. More pix to come...
Outside the room ... still need to hang a door.
TV wall side of the room.
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Ziegreich
New Zealand
Auckland
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Years ago I had a table made (useless handyman myself) which had a raised rim, an inch or so high, around the edge with a lip that held a loose pane of glass in position. I'd play on the inner surface and then put the glass pane over the top afterwards. This allowed me to leave unfinished games visible and undisturbed until I could continue them at later date.
Alas, the table did not survive emigration.
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Posted Fri Mar 7, 2008 7:40 pm
