Converting a "Garden Store" to an Arcade room

[Shun]

Ok, so it's been a few months since I made a start on the false ceiling. Before I could continue and put the cross beams in, I needed to route the twin and earth for the new sockets that I wanted installing. Currently I have one double socket that is feeding everything in the room and there are extension cords everywhere.

First thing to do is to install the sockets. Installing them on the brick walls is as easy as drilling some holes, adding rawlplugs and screwing the socket to the wall. However, installing the sockets to the stud wall was a little more complicated as I had to cut some of the insulation and add a noggin to attach a socket to:


I'm adding seven sockets, five of which needed to be added in the way above.
Last one done:


Then I needed to route the twin and earth. I routed the twin and earth from the near the existing socket staying above the false ceiling level and then down vertically in line with the first new socket and then a straight line horizontally to the second socket and then back up above the false ceiling line:




This is so the twin and earth is in the "safe zone" http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/Safe_zones_for_electric_cables.
While I was doing this, I also finished adding the foil membrane over the stud walls as I had to re-locate the holes for the sockets through the membrane after it was attached:

 

[Shun]

While waiting for a sparky to come and terminate the twin and earth, I decided to sort out un insulated area above the window.
firstly, I added in some extra wood to force the insulation between:



Then filled this with 50mm insulation and lots of expanding foam:



I started adding some offcuts of OSB in front of the insulation as it wasn't quite thick enough to sit flush with the wooden battens. I filled the void between the insulation and OSB with more expanding foam.

Then the electrician came around and terminated the sockets. It only took him about an hour and it only cost £40 for seven sockets! He even installed switched fuse spur so I can isolate the room if needed. Now I can power more than on machine at once:



I am aware that these two machines need a lot of TLC. Lots of rust and paint flaking. Will get around to them at some point . I've got a spare Nintendo coin door that needs to go on the DK. Just need some spare time to sort it. Hopefully once this room is done, I can concentrate on sorting the machines.

 

[Shun]

Next thing to do was to start adding the cross beams. I needed about eight or nine in total as I'm adding these at 600mm centres.
So rather than get all of the wood in one go, I went and got four 45mm x 95mm (or 2"x4") from B&Q. For some reason, B&Q have stopped selling 3m lengths of 2x4. The only options are 2.4m or 3.6m. This is annoying as most of the lengths of wood that I needed were over 2.4m but under 3m. So had to go with 3.6m and get it trimmed down so I could fit it on the car. Luckily B&Q do offer that service for free and it was a couple of quid more for the 3.6m wood compared to the 3m they used to sell. Annoying though.

Anyway, car loaded up:



I measured where the first cross beam would go and cut it to length on one side at a seven degree angle to accommodate the angle of the stud wall side:



I also had to trim the height of the entire length of the first cross beam at an angle so it would fit into place:



I've almost finished adding the OSB to the gap above the window as well in the above picture.
Because I'm putting the cross beams on top of the "runners" it means that I can do this job on my own. It would probably be pretty difficult trying to attach these with joist hangers without anyone else helping. It's so easy to cut the cross beam to size, lift it up and it just sits there.
In fact, before I used any screws to attach the beams, I just hot glued them in place so that they wouldn't move once I had it lined up properly.

Then I secured them in place with some L brackets:


I set my self a goal of adding one of these beams each day after work. The first one took extra time because I had to trim the top of it, but the next few were easy:



Needed some more wood at this point, and calculated that I need five more 2x4s. Off to B&Q!

 

[Shun]

When measuring where the next cross beam was going to go, I realised that the annoying down pipe that I have in this room was smack bang in the middle of where the 600mm centre was going to be. . So had to add a cross beam either side and add some noggins in later if I need to attach ceiling panels at that particular point in the ceiling. Also, another added complication was that the brick pillar on the other side of the room was where I wanted one of these cross beams to go and I had nothing to rest the beam on, on that side of the room. So I had to use a joist hanger and it was a complete pain. I got there in the end though:



Then adding the cross beams became easier again:


Then the last one added in. This was a bit tricky as I had to route out some of the wood to allow for the twin and earth and the ethernet cable that was clipped to the wall:



And that's where I'm up to. The next thing that I want to sort out is adding some downlights to replace the florescent light that I have in there at the moment. The downlights will go in-between the cross beams and held in place with sections of OSB.

 

[Mr20to5]

Coming on nicely. Amazing the transformation and how different the space looks and feels with a couple of cabs in side and switched on. DK and PP. Strong choices.

 

[Shun]

Coming on nicely. Amazing the transformation and how different the space looks and feels with a couple of cabs in side and switched on. DK and PP. Strong choices.

Thanks! I’m glad those joists are in now. Wasn’t looking forward to that job.

I was advised to put the sockets higher up so that the machines can be turned off and and on easily, which I completely forgot about and installed the sockets near the floor 🤦‍♂️. So turning the DK and PP on is a little tricky. However, I bought some of these and it’s now very easy to switch those machines on and off. I even switch all of my consoles on with one of these:



The other cabs are easy to switch on and off without using one of these.

 

[Stickman]

Looking good, I have all my cabs on a WiFi plugs and can use an app on the phone or wall mounted tablet or Google Home to turn on and off, when I did my cabin I installed skirting trunking so it was all hidden.

 

[Shun]

Looking good, I have all my cabs on a WiFi plugs and can use an app on the phone or wall mounted tablet or Google Home to turn on and off, when I did my cabin I installed skirting trunking so it was all hidden.

Thanks 👍. That sounds like a great setup. Do you mind letting me know what WiFi plugs you used? These plugs are great, but you can only have four setup on a remote. That’s fine for now, but I might need more at a later date.

 

[Stickman]

Thanks 👍. That sounds like a great setup. Do you mind letting me know what WiFi plugs you used? These plugs are great, but you can only have four setup on a remote. That’s fine for now, but I might need more at a later date.

They are just generic smart plugs from Amazon, there are two types that either give power usage or not via the app. I use the SmartLife App for them, I have a Hubitat Hub so may change to ZWAVE so I can integrate into the full home automation in the future.

Amazon.co.uk : smart plugs

 

[Shun]

They are just generic smart plugs from Amazon, there are two types that either give power usage or not via the app. I use the SmartLife App for them, I have a Hubitat Hub so may change to ZWAVE so I can integrate into the full home automation in the future.

Amazon.co.uk : smart plugs

Thanks. I’ll have a look 👍

 

[mlynn]

Did you consider using GRP on the flat roof? Not cheap at £100/sqm but usually comes with 30 year warranty if installed by an approved contractor.
In Scotland usually 3 layers of felt built up is required.
The warm roof and insulation will make a big difference in energy costs.

 

[TheDaddy]

Can you PLEASE NOT post things like this , Just makes me wanna convert my garage and I dont have the time or money ! lol

On a serious note it looks great

Dave.

 

[Shun]

Did you consider using GRP on the flat roof? Not cheap at £100/sqm but usually comes with 30 year warranty if installed by an approved contractor.
In Scotland usually 3 layers of felt built up is required.
The warm roof and insulation will make a big difference in energy costs.

You mean the roof on this room? The roof on this room is pitched. Has an OSB deck and felt. Cost £1k. This replaced the plastic roof that was already there. I didn't want to spend too much on the roof to be honest. The 50mm of insulation that I have installed underneath, should hopefully keep it warm. I'm also probably going to add insulation over the new false ceiling to keep in extra heat. I'm also going to add insulated plaster board to the external walls in this room, again to keep a much heat in as possible.

 

[Shun]

Can you PLEASE NOT post things like this , Just makes me wanna convert my garage and I dont have the time or money ! lol

On a serious note it looks great

Dave.

Sorry . I know where you are coming from. To get to this point it has taken around 3/4 years of improving this room as cheap as possible. With two young kids, my time is very limited, it's usually days off of work where I get to make most of the progress. All in with the roof and all the wood and insulation etc etc, I've probably spent at most £2k (£1k for the roof which was paid for because I sold my car because I work from home now). If you do a little bit at a time when you can you can spread the costs involved.

For example when I was insulating the roof, I bought 6 small insulation panels at £5 each from Wickes at a time (I think they are nearer £10 now though ) so it cost me £30. Took a little while to install them then went and bought another 6. Slowly but surely I insulated the roof and it didn't feel too expensive.

 

[Stokers]

Yeah this is pretty inspirational, i've had ideas to insulate my external garage for about a year now.. this has made me think I could (and should) do some parts of it myself. It looks great!

 

[Shun]

Time to sort the lighting out in the room!

The fluorescent light that I have in there now is not great and it is mounted above the new false ceiling so its even darker in the room now with the beams in the way.

I could mount the fluorescent light underneath the beams, but I want some downlights.

I bought this 10 pack of downlights from Screwfix https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-cosm...-led-downlight-white-5-8w-450lm-10-pack/861pp. I'm only going to use 8 so I'll have two spare if any of them are faulty etc.

Currently there is nothing to mount the downlights to so I'm going to have to put some OSB between the beams where I want each downlight.
Here is what I came with for the lighting mounts:



Some left over OSB attached some of the left over wood from the beams that I cut for the false ceiling.
Once I had mad this, I realised that it was far too big and heavy just for one downlight, so I cut it in half and now I have two mounts! 😁:



So the idea with these is that I offer them up to the false ceiling beams and attach it with screws from the side, like this:



I used my trick of hot gluing the mount in place while I drilled the holes for the screws and then screwed it into position.

After a while, they were all made and screwed into place:



Next was to mark the positions where the downlights were going to go. They weren't going to go right in the middle of the mounts as I wanted them slightly shifted away from the back wall and nearer to the front of the room so the lights are as near to being over my office desk.
I used some string to make sure the downlights were in line with each other:



Using the string, I marks each mount at regular intervals and then started cutting the holes:



Then fitted the downlights into place:



Next I wired the lights up by daisy chaining them with 1mm twin and earth. The lights come with these push fit style connections:



Normally you would connect up downlights before pushing them into the ceiling, but I have access above the lights, so I can put them in first and then figure out how much wire I need to reach each light.

So ran the twin and earth by clipping the wire to the beams and cutting the wire to the right length. Was tedious, but got there in the end. Then stripped the cable and connected the wires to the push connectors. This was pretty fiddly, but I only had to do this 8 times. The arcade machines as usual got in the way a bit so had to move some of those around to get the ladder underneath.

I have this picture of the old light that was in place before, you can see the new twin and earth wire attached to the beam with clips:



Finally, I turned off the power to the room and cut the wire to the old florescent light and wired the twin and earth to the existing wire.
Switched the power on to the room and flicked the switch on the fused spur:

They work! They are so much brighter than the existing light. The next job is to replaced the switched fuse spur, replace it with a normal fused spur and add a dimmer switch.

 

[Shun]

Bonus video of the lights off and the arcades on!
The poor old Pac-Man cabaret wasn't on as its still in bits waiting to get painted 😅

 

[Mr20to5]

Another step closer and Pole Position still working, which is an added bonus to any day.....

 

[Shun]

Another step closer and Pole Position still working, which is an added bonus to any day.....

I know, it’s always a worry with Pole Position. It has a Namco board rather than an Atari board, so it’s a little more reliable but probably not much 😅

 

[Retroman839]

Coming along nicely 👍
Well done . Looks great you got some nice games there!