Episode 1374
How to build that Game Room or Gaming Room. Lets have some fun!
A great project Around the House can be building that game room or gaming room within your home. We talk about both spaces and some of the things to consider before you get started. Do you want that large arcade or pool hall look OR do you want that quiet place to have your gaming set up? All this and MORE in this hour of Around the House Show!
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Mentioned in this episode:
Baldwin Hardware
A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard
For more information about the latest in decking and cladding head to https://www.millboard.com/
Transcript
[00:00:04] Caroline Blazovsky: You know, you got me thinking about space and when you are using these games, you need room besides the game you need room to move. Like. So if you're doing ski ball, Hmm, you're backing up quite a bit to throw that arm. So you need at least four or five feet behind you to be able to play the game properly.
[:[00:00:37] Caroline Blazovsky: Two people playing.
[:[00:00:50] Intro: a lot to know that we got you covered. This is around the house.
[:[00:00:58] Eric Goranson: G and Caroline B. [00:01:00] Talk home improvement every single week. Thanks for joining us. Hey Caroline, how are you?
[:[00:01:09] Eric Goranson: Welcome. We need to get you a, uh, mini split system for your office,
[:[00:01:14] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh yeah, yeah, kind of, but then I have to drill through the wall and I got faster.
[:[00:01:19] Eric Goranson: and you got plaster and you got an old building and it's historical and yeah. Okay. Nevermind. We gotta come up with something
[:[00:01:27] Eric Goranson: can help us in. Yeah, we gotta come up with a plan for you. Cause you're over there sweating to the oldies. It
[:[00:01:37] Eric Goranson: do you expect?
[:[00:02:10] Eric Goranson: know, or maybe even, you know, getting out the. Getting out the ski ball machine, right?
[:[00:02:16] Intro: awesome. Yes.
[:[00:02:21] Intro: You see
[:[00:02:31] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about designing these rooms because it's not something you just like throw in the corner of the attic or the basement.
[:[00:02:53] Caroline Blazovsky: what I found interesting. I was looking at all different game rooms on the internet cause I wanted to see what game or gaming and we need to talk [00:03:00] about the difference between the two rooms look like.
[:[00:03:20] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. And to me, the difference in, in what I call in the design world, the difference between a game room in a game room is a game room is more your traditional arcade, pinball, you know, pool.
[:[00:03:51] Caroline Blazovsky: be two different spaces.
[:[00:04:08] Eric Goranson: I like it. It was interesting.
[:[00:04:37] Eric Goranson: There's just a long, like 10 foot hedge and, uh, a, a guard station that's behind this big 10 foot hall gate, 10 foot tall iron gate and a key box. So I drive up, push the key box and they say, pull in, you pull in. And there's a guard station. And there's like fully armed tactical AR type squat team guys that come [00:05:00] out.
[:[00:05:20] Eric Goranson: And I mean, there's a dog sniffing the outside of my car. This was like state department kinda weird stuff. Well, as I'm walking around the space, I walk past this bedroom, which is a fairly large bedroom in like a 1940s, fifties house kind of ranch house. And there's the most amazing floating gaming chair with screens.
[:[00:06:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah. I walked by. I was like, and again for 15. Plus years ago, it was way out there. Right. You know, way out there for that, like innovative might have. Yeah. Yeah. It was state of the art, but now, you know, it's funny. So, you know, great example when you're trying to create that game room and we'll talk about gaming here a little later on in the show, let's dive into game you, your traditional, you know, Maybe it's got the pinball machine, you know, ski ball.
[:[00:06:42] Intro: team
[:[00:06:48] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. Oh, defender. That's
[:[00:06:51] Eric Goranson: I had that in my basement, the full size one that we'd won from Chucky cheese, you know, as a kid. So I got really good at that game, but.
[:[00:07:11] Caroline Blazovsky: At electric, like seriously high powered electric. It pulls amp ampage, like crazy.
[:[00:07:27] Eric Goranson: Or maybe into, you know, into a, an attic space. So these are things you kind of have to think about. Okay, can I get this in the space? Right.
[:[00:07:38] Eric Goranson: that's tough. Yeah, he did. And it was tough. He got the ski ball machine in and he picked it up for a song. He just rebuilt it and been going through it and he could barely get it tilted up in the basement because it's so tall.
[:[00:07:57] Caroline Blazovsky: in your mind. You think, oh, I'm gonna put [00:08:00] this in there, but your house is much smaller than like a giant, you know, arcade or something that you would see like a commercial place where they have these located, you know, your ceiling's not gonna be that high.
[:[00:08:10] Eric Goranson: Hmm. Double doors open up. You got a five foot wide opening. You got 10 foot, 20 foot ceilings. It's not a big deal in a basement or an attic. It's a whole different. One of the big things. And you talked about this too, Caroline, it's something I wanna talk a little bit more about when we get into this in the next, in the next segment, because it's gonna take time, but one just being able to get it.
[:[00:08:49] Caroline Blazovsky: I see a lot of people online using very small spaces, like, so it could be an apartment, you know, they have children making these spaces into game areas. Mm-hmm that's you gotta take that into [00:09:00] consideration when you're really in a structure that isn't built for that originally, and it's tiny. It could be economy size.
[:[00:09:22] Eric Goranson: But when we come back, I wanna talk about if you're doing that serious game room, like you're gonna put in maybe. Two or three pinball machines. Maybe you're gonna have a, you know, five or six upright video games. If you're gonna go serious with this, let's talk about those things that you need to consider.
[:[00:09:48] Intro: be loud, be so hot, hot,
[:[00:09:59] Eric Goranson: [00:10:00] Hey, I'm Rudy Wade. And you're listening to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B, listen to my music to
[:[00:10:13] Eric Goranson: your head. Like welcome back to the, around the house show or we talk home improvement every single week.
[:[00:10:36] Eric Goranson: Just look for around the house shop. What you got there? Caroline
[:[00:10:42] Caroline Blazovsky: auto three.
[:[00:10:48] Intro: That would
[:[00:10:51] Eric Goranson: yeah, we've been talking game rooms here and, uh, grant theft auto is a classic in the gaming world. But, you know, [00:11:00] when we went to break, we were talking about, okay, if you're gonna build out that game room with that, with those, you know, the big old school vintage arcade games, whether it's ski ball or, uh, you know, a centipede, miss Pacman, Pacman, or any one of those things, you gotta think of the technology you're putting in there.
[:[00:11:23] Intro: and like one of the things to put out heat,
[:[00:11:29] Eric Goranson: Well, you think about it. So ski ball, not so much, but there's transformers inside a ski ball game that converts that over. So that puts out its own heat there, but you might need two or three different dedicated electrical circuits in that space.
[:[00:12:03] Eric Goranson: And to be honest, I wanna see some of that stuff where it's actually switched. Which can be a little more complex, so you can turn those games off when you're done. Cuz they use a lot of electricity. I don't wanna see you have a, an extra, you know, $60 bill cuz you left those things plugged in. Like it's an arcade 24 7.
[:[00:12:40] Caroline Blazovsky: And so they can produce a lot of heat. And that's a lot of that old or, or what I call traditional boardwalk games and people put them in their homes all the time.
[:[00:13:03] Eric Goranson: One thing you can do to help with this is you can swap out those C R T old tube televisions on those. LCD or L E D monitors behind them, cuz they're just kind of TVs in there behind them. And so you can jump online, do the research, make sure you do them correctly. Um, and by the way, you can get yourself.
[:[00:13:51] Eric Goranson: So make sure you know what you're doing. And, uh, make your, make sure you're discharging things correctly and not getting yourself hurt, but you can do that. And that's gonna [00:14:00] save a huge amount of power because you gotta think about those old televisions or like your grandmothers or parents' TV. They had those old tube televisions used a boatload of power compared to today's, you know, newer television.
[:[00:14:31] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's the same. If you have foosball, if you have ping pong, if you have any type of shuffle board, You need some serious depth to be able to, so, you know, think about the size of the equipment, but then think about how much room you need to maneuver to play properly. And so you're both not cramped or another player as well.
[:[00:14:49] Eric Goranson: you think about it a 12, uh, a 10 foot ski ball machine, which is the tiny one. That's the kind of the compact ski ball machine that still takes up 10 feet. And so you're not putting that in a traditional bedroom. If you [00:15:00] get the, the regular arcade style, that's a 13 to 14 foot unit.
[:[00:15:24] Eric Goranson: That's not a normal bedroom. So now you're taking a space to do it. No,
[:[00:15:40] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, it's gonna be cramped, but you can do it.
[:[00:15:58] Caroline Blazovsky: And they're so awkward shape. [00:16:00] They're like real big and the screen's on the top. Mm-hmm remember. And then they, they funnel down to the small, so they're not like this easy shape, top shape to maneuver.
[:[00:16:14] Eric Goranson: That heating and cooling system in there. Maybe you're putting in a mini split unit to, to keep that space cool. And, and all of that. And then of course, when you're doing that kind of thing, are you putting in a, a sink? Are you putting in a bar refrigerator you're putting in a popcorn machine? What are you gonna be doing outside of just the games, right.
[:[00:16:34] Caroline Blazovsky: machine is a good, you know, popcorn produces such volume organics. You would probably wanna have ventilation for that. That's so I never thought about that that's old school, but you need ventilation. If you're gonna be doing a popcorn machine.
[:[00:16:54] Eric Goranson: And, and, you know, you put the oil in and so that's actually less VOCs than the, than the microwave [00:17:00] popcorn, but a lot of people just put the microwave in the microwave popcorn, which is very unhealthy. When you start talking about the VOCs coming off a microwave popcorn. But even that you're putting oil and popcorn in yeah.
[:[00:17:12] Caroline Blazovsky: So, and in a basement with no ventilation, can you imagine some humidity that would smell real nice basement oil, popcorn, stale, or, you know, a lot of people you guys put in cigar rooms and smoking rooms and you know, all that kind of stuff you really have to ventilate now. I mean, we, we know more about how important it is for, you know, not just for code that you have to do it, but for your health.
[:[00:18:00] Eric Goranson: So it looked like an old 19 that's cool twenties bank, vault door. Yeah. But trying to get that bank vault door into the basement, never cause you're talking now, uh, a 1800 pound door that you're carrying by hand into the basement with a dozen guys. We actually broke one of the stair treads going down to the basement where a guy put his foot through the stair tread.
[:[00:18:56] Intro: Hey
[:[00:19:03] Intro: building
[:[00:19:03] Intro: up.
[:[00:19:46] Eric Goranson: What are you doing to control sound? Or if you've got a neighbor's house that's really close next door, you know, suburbia house where you got the neighbor next door, that noise can go right through it or condos, you know, [00:20:00] controlling sound is big. One of my favorites. For doing recording studios for doing even a, a, a room in the house for doing zoom and, and, uh, education stuff is using, uh, Rockwell or a similar product Owens.
[:[00:20:40] Eric Goranson: It's, it's a product that the water will go right through it and doesn't stick to it. So it doesn't get, you know, that's the problem with like fiberglass when fiberglass get wet, nasty, it looks like a, a wet towels. Oh, right. Forget. It just gets nasty. A black S mess. And so this
[:[00:20:58] Caroline Blazovsky: What's in Rockwell that makes it [00:21:00] so soundproof. Like why is it that sound doesn't travel through
[:[00:21:03] Eric Goranson: It's intense. It's well, it's not that it's dense is what it does is it's, it's got great properties to it. So it's a mineral wall. So it's a spun mineral. And what it does is that, that it's a mixture of having the absorption.
[:[00:21:50] Eric Goranson: That's why in a room with a, a gymnasium where you have. Block walls in a, in a hardwood floor. You have sound gym [00:22:00] floor, squeaky floor. Yeah. Well you get it just everywhere. It sounds bouncing around everywhere. And so the more you can do to absorb sound and not let it transfer to the other side is good.
[:[00:22:12] Intro: so it's like, yeah,
[:[00:22:28] Caroline Blazovsky: A thick carpet. You.
[:[00:22:44] Eric Goranson: So decoratively, you can do a lot more with it, cuz it looks nicer without having to put all the padded panels up. And so that's a
[:[00:22:56] Intro: A little
[:[00:23:06] Eric Goranson: And they're not that expensive, you know, you can do that on top of you don't wanna get into that, you know, and that works out pretty well as well. And that's a good transition into the gaming room, which can be gaming slash. Theater room within the house
[:[00:23:25] Eric Goranson: exactly everything.
[:[00:23:44] Eric Goranson: So it's, it's a great space, but again, sound controls big and.
[:[00:24:06] Caroline Blazovsky: Because you'll need additional heating and cooling, or you could do, um, a Wallin unit, like a free drink where you can add heat or cooling when you need it, because you may not need it all the time, but
[:[00:24:27] Eric Goranson: On a, you know, it's through the wall and maybe a utility room that's next to it. So it's not putting heat into that room. Mm-hmm. So you've got a, a, you know, a utility rack that has all your amplifiers and maybe the projector, if it's a projector style is behind, you know, in the, in the back. So that heat is going someplace else.
[:[00:25:17] Eric Goranson: Uh, there's a lot of different things you can do with that, which is kind of fun.
[:[00:25:23] Eric Goranson: growing up. What was your favorite video game?
[:[00:25:29] Eric Goranson: position? I had the Atari.
[:[00:25:53] Eric Goranson: My little brother. Had his birthday at this new place called Chucky Jesus. And [00:26:00] it'd just come.
[:[00:26:03] Eric Goranson: cheese. Yeah. Great. Yeah. There's still a few in town here. Um, you eat pizza and play games. Yeah. Horrible pizza here. Yeah. So, but the cool thing was for their one year anniversary. Yeah. For the one year animatronic creepy animatronic stuff in there.
[:[00:26:43] Eric Goranson: We spent. The mornings of the summers down there playing until my mom would kick us out, you know, but I got really good cuz it was one game that I played. And when we went on vacation in the motor home and did the whole thing, like the Koa campgrounds had to get lure people in, they had [00:27:00] an arcade, you know, they took the, maybe the pool room and where.
[:[00:27:30] Eric Goranson: And so I made more money on vacation. Doing bats on, on
[:[00:27:54] Caroline Blazovsky: But
[:[00:28:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So that was, that was that
[:[00:28:12] Caroline Blazovsky: See that everybody's brought this into their home. Yeah. But see, now everybody's brought this into their home, so there's no need to have it out at these locations because everybody's putting in gaming rooms exactly. Or has gaming
[:[00:28:24] Eric Goranson: We're gonna wrap this subject up. We'll do that just as soon as around the house returns.[00:29:00]
[:[00:29:11] Eric Goranson: a man from
[:[00:29:23] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the, around the house show where we talk home improvement every single week. Well, Caroline and I have been sitting here talking about building that arcade. Room, you know, that game room, the gaming space. And one thing I wanted to talk about before we get into some of the other stuff is how the value of a lot of these things have gone up.
[:[00:30:01] Eric Goranson: How much was your
[:[00:30:04] Eric Goranson: Oh, that's a lot of money. Oh yeah. Yeah. Those are crazy. I think my brother paid for two ski ball machines. I think he paid five or 600 bucks for him and he's restoring both of them. And the problem is with sometimes with these games is that the parts can be crazy expensive.
[:[00:30:39] Intro: Yeah.
[:[00:30:44] Eric Goranson: a lot of them out there and there's people out there that make replacement boards.
[:[00:31:05] Intro: Yeah. Oh,
[:[00:31:08] Caroline Blazovsky: They get expensive, especially if you've got, I saw a $6 million, uh, man pinball machine. That thing was crazy.
[:[00:31:15] Eric Goranson: kinda cool. Right. Oh man. You know, I love that I would have that in a heartbeat. Right. I mean, you know, and, but at the same time you can get a pool table. Sometimes if you're searching for, you know, a hundred bucks, you move it, you know what I mean?
[:[00:31:30] Intro: enjoyment. And so.
[:[00:31:48] Caroline Blazovsky: I don't know how well you're gonna do,
[:[00:32:05] Caroline Blazovsky: pinball
[:[00:32:07] Eric Goranson: Yeah. I mean, here's a, I want, here's a, uh, yeah, there's a bunch of them in here. You know, here's a 1977 Charlie pinball machine, but it needs a little work, 250 bucks, right. So it's just depending on what you're looking for, here's something cool that I've seen people do too. That's a new one, taking those old what I call quarter slot machines and putting 'em in and putting in the old vintage slot machines and having 'em in there.
[:[00:32:47] Eric Goranson: That's like California, some of the newer ones. Those are cool too. But again,
[:[00:32:52] Caroline Blazovsky: big. Those are
[:[00:33:08] Eric Goranson: That works. No, you know, so something to think about,
[:[00:33:25] Intro: want us
[:[00:33:26] Eric Goranson: Did you have you have a favorite pinball machine or pinball machine brand that you played? No, but I was
[:[00:33:34] Eric Goranson: play my favorite ones were like the, the Williams brand one. The movie. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Was a quote from a movie. Is that a quote from a movie I could just play?
[:[00:33:47] Intro: oh no. Goodwill hunting,
[:[00:33:52] Eric Goranson: play, play. There you go. There you go. So yeah, those are all things to consider with that, but you know, And I'll be honest [00:34:00] when you're designing the gaming room, you know, with that, with the theater room, this is what I recommend bringing in the professionals to design that out, to make sure that you've got that audio visual designer to come in there and make sure that you have all the right pieces, because the bad part is, is you don't want this in five years to be completely out of date.
[:[00:34:42] Eric Goranson: Now you can get the movie seats that have the, the rumble devices in 'em. So they shake with the base, you know, there's so many cool things that you can do in these spaces to make 'em mark,
[:[00:34:52] Caroline Blazovsky: know, the other thing too, and I know we're going out soon, but, um, the lighting is so good. Oh my gosh, because you need different lighting completely for when [00:35:00] you're gaming.
[:[00:35:13] Eric Goranson: And I like getting, you know, like if I've got a pool room where I've got the pool and that I like getting that bar pool room light to go over the top of the pool table, you know that, oh, you're I like the old school look of those, you know?
[:[00:35:49] Eric Goranson: Oh one back then he bought from them the pool rack for the balls in the queues and everything from that guy's house out of [00:36:00] an estate sale up. And so it's, you know, 1900 rack for the balls in the queue. Completely cool vintage stuff, but those are all things that you can add to it. And you'll see people put in maybe the diner jukebox, and that can be pretty
[:[00:36:16] Intro: Oh yeah. I love the jukebox.
[:[00:36:33] Eric Goranson: like neon sign.
[:[00:36:45] Intro: Or slushing machine. I've seen that, man. I've seen that slush. I've
[:[00:36:50] Eric Goranson: I think that's that's you have to have that. You have to have that for that. And then what are you gonna do for flooring? You know, you gonna do a, a vinyl tile down there. You're gonna put down a wow. [00:37:00] Make it look like it's a fifties vintage. You gotta almost have to start out with what style is this gonna.
[:[00:37:28] Eric Goranson: That'll take it cuz you wanna be able to move stuff around in there without trashing a floor. Yeah. It's so
[:[00:37:35] Eric Goranson: tile's the worst. No,
[:[00:37:40] Eric Goranson: you're cracking or you, you want everything. I mean, getting. Pool table level, getting the pinball machine level level, getting that in there is, is tough.
[:[00:38:03] Caroline Blazovsky: if you did just do a, like a paintable.
[:[00:38:12] Eric Goranson: it? Like a carpet? Um, I'm not a fan of carpets on concrete and basements just because they love to get moldy and mild dewy from the moisture coming up through there.
[:[00:38:36] Eric Goranson: So I really want to come down and, and even put down a, a, you know, a proper waterproof subfloor material with some floor drains in there and then put a flooring system on top of it. That's kind of the best. Carpet can be good in areas. If you've got an area that's gonna be where people are gonna sit down or have a gaming area, carpet can be good.
[:[00:39:03] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah, because you don't. Removable, because if you guys, if you get a leak or something that's coming up or flood, yeah. You wanna make sure that's hard, really carpeting in those areas is tough in gaming rooms.
[:[00:39:21] Eric Goranson: Caroline we're out of time. I hear that music plan. It's time to go. Good luck on your game in rooms out there. I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening to.
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