Gameroom upgrade

[muddymusic]

You can see my original room here : https://www.ukvac.com/forum/threads/muddymusics-garage-arcade.29705/
Although I was really happy with it, it was done quite quickly when I moved in so I could house my cabs immediately, quite a few corners were cut, and I was having to run a dehumidier constantly from around October until May just to keep things dry enough. It was also very cold in winter.

During the covid lockdown I made the decision to move my office out of the house, it was all getting a bit much having the biggest bedroom overflowing with work stuff constantly, so it was the perfect excuse to go back and redo the garage with a higher spec finish, and also make it more secure and generally just a nicer place to hang out all day.

I wanted to go light and bright with lots of space around the cabs. A smaller collection, but more mint cabs and more pins as well as that's what I tend to play most.
The big change was going to be to swap out the roller door and small door for 2 full width french doors, and also to do a properly damp proofed and insulated floating floor.

Here's the original setup.

 

[muddymusic]

Started pulling up the floor (which has been laid on some basic thin foam) and the plasterboard walls which were literally just bare board screwed to timbers with some DPC in between.


This section at the front had clearly had water coming in for years, it was wet all up the timbers


I let that dry out for a good 5 days before doing anything. Once that was done I fitted new DPC up the walls and across the floor, with polystyrene over and then chipboard flooring.


Up to the front as far as I could go until the doors went in. Like everything during lockdown there were massive delays in production.
I decided on timber cladding for the walls, a bit of a cornwall beach hut type thing.
I would say don't underestimate how much you need....I had delivery after delivery of packs of the stuff from Wickes.




Walls almost done. For the first time since I did the room both parts were now the same height! The workshop I did with the same floating floor method I was doing for the main room, I'd always planned to go back sometime and do the rest.

Carpet tiles had arrived at this point and had started fitting the ceiling with new strip lighting and getting cabs roughly in position.
The window I had a plan for, to use as a giant lit marquee basically.

 

[muddymusic]

More timber work, fitting edging and skirting, more ceiling done. Starting to feel nicer in there.


Almost time to fit some carpet.


Skirting and other finishing off of sockets and stuff.



Time to start laying the carpet tiles. This was definitely my favourite part of the work.

 

[muddymusic]

At this point the last 1m of the room had no floor or anything as I was waiting for my nice doors to be done. At last the call came to say they were ready.


Before ^ and after...



Second one in. Totally different feel inside the room after this, it all felt bigger and brighter.


Can finally finish off the end part of the room properly.



Put up some heavy blackout curtains to finish.

 

[muddymusic]

And it's all done. Took about 3 weeks to do the work on the room in the evenings and weekends. Cost with the doors and all the materials, carpet tiles and such was probably around 8k I'd guess.

Daytime mode is like this



And for gaming time here's how it looks.




This was the old window, I made one large perspex sheet with some of my favourite artwork and some warm white LED strips behind.

 

[muddymusic]

 

[tb lilley]

Looks like some seriously hard work - fantastic result though. Well played !

 

[1bradders]

Looks great! Is the animated marquee a Pixelcade?

 

[Mr20to5]

Brilliant stuff Olly. Fantastic effort and the end result speaks for itself.

 

[antray84]

Looks really good. I am going for the same idea with my new room, less stuff but better stuff. Makes such a different to have a nice space rather than tons of projects crammed into every nook.

 

[big10p]

Great job, Olly.

I'm sans gameroom myself at the mo, due to a major malfunction (leak has cause the ceiling to come down). Just contemplating what to do with it... possibly a total rebuild, but I'll be paying someone to do it all as I don't have the skills. 😛

Is that one of pinballinfo Paul's DMD wall clocks you have? Just ordered myself one today!

 

[K1ngarth3r]

Well worth all the effort, it looks fantastic and those French doors look awesome. Great line up of games too!

 

[muddymusic]

Looks great! Is the animated marquee a Pixelcade?

It's a pi2dmd, made by someone on here.

 

[tin]

Lovely, lovely stuff!

 

[Shun]

That looks amazing! The lighting really sets off "gaming time" mode. Well done Olly. Could do with some French doors on my gaming room, will have to try and convince my Wife that they are worth the cost

 

[FrancoB]

Great stuff mate! Love it all. Marquee window was a great idea

 

[chefsolid]

Ahh lovely. The joy of carpet tile, brings it all together really well. Chapeau sir!

 

[69er]

Excellent ….. playtime anytime 🔟 scored !

 

[neo-geo-mvs]

Looks amazing and very professional. Congrats!!

 

[Danscu]

Fantastic work mate! Bet you feel great now its all up and running. Great selection of cabs! Would love to visit some time.