Add a game room, and value, to your home -- Page 2

What's old is new again
The appeal of residential game rooms isn't anything new for Bob Jones Jr., president of American Sale, a recreational furnishings business with eight locations in the Chicagoland area.

"Actually I would say that it was probably in the late '80s when we really started to see the trend toward creating a game room in people's homes," says Jones, whose family has owned and operated the company for 45 years.

One thing, however, has changed. Back in the mid-1980s, Jones says his customers were looking primarily for billiards tables to anchor their game rooms. Games for today's home recreation rooms have evolved into a more-commercial type of arcade entertainment.

"Now, there's more than just billiards," he says. "Take turbo [air] hockey. It used to be a simple game, but they've added scoring to it, an announcer, lights that flash, the ability to adjust the skill level. It's become more interactive."

And then there's poker.

"The last two years has just seen an explosion in poker," says Jones. "We are seeing a lot of people come into the stores and look for chip sets. They want the reality, the feel of Las Vegas. A few years ago we started selling inexpensive plastic chips, and quite frankly, they just don't sell anymore. Customers want the realism they see on TV."

Plan for changing trends
But what happens to all those Texas Hold 'Em items when the fascination with poker passes?

Tim Carter, a Cincinnati-based builder and creator of the Ask the Builder Web site, says the key to any successful remodeling project is basic planning.

"What's really cool is that you can take a room that could serve many purposes and transform it into a game room and then back again if the trend goes away," says Carter.

That's only possible, he says, when you take a realistic look at your home before making any changes.

"For some rooms in the house, such a conversion is not really an option. On a really basic level, you can't successfully turn a dining room into a game room."

Game room conversion mistakes
And the biggest mistake, says Carter, is that homeowners try to turn a too-small area into a game room.

"You start eating up giant spaces and people drastically underestimate the size of the room you need, even for a simple pingpong table. The table itself is nine feet long and at either end you need a minimum of six feet. On each side you have to have at least four feet.

"Do the math and you find out that for that one game, you need a huge room. And then you get into other games."

Carter says remodeling homeowners also often overlook a room's traffic patterns.

"There's a natural flow to all rooms," he says. "Each has interior hallways. Think about your own living room. You have a pathway in front of your coffee table, a way you normally walk around your couch to get to another area of the room.

"For a game room, think about the games you plan to have. For example, you want to put the darts off in a corner furthest from traffic, in a corner where the actual dartboard is as far away as possible from walkways, so no one gets hurt."

Basic building consideration
Then there are the basic components of the room: flooring, plumbing, lighting and other electrical needs.

Carter is a "huge fan" of cork flooring; it absorbs sound, is somewhat hard and finished cork can resemble hardwood and resist the inevitable game room spills. Whatever you choose, he says make sure the flooring is level so that the games sit properly.

Some remodelers install new plumbing in the new game room for a more convenient powder room or wet bar. In these cases, says Carter, changes have to be designed so they can be fairly easily converted, if the need arises.

"What happens if we want to change this room out?" asks Carter. "Plumbing that goes down into a slab, for example, can be expensive and disruptive to move."

Also consider the effect of lighting. It's natural to want to focus fixtures on a main game, be it a pool table or your weekly poker setup. But don't overlook the other entertainment options. You don't want lighting that produces glare problems for players of other games, says Carter.

And lighting issues connect back to the game room's overall electrical needs.

"People put in too many items that draw too much electricity," says Carter. "Think ahead about electric games. They tend to use a significant amount of current, and in the average room, it might not be sufficient. For old-fashioned arcade games, the total amperage draws are huge.

"This gets back to a real hard-core planning scheme. If you're remodeling or building a new home with a game room, absolutely plan it so that the room could be transformed from a game room into something else."

Carter's final tip: If you've already got some items you plan to put in a game room, get them out of storage and put them on your driveway. Space out that foosball game, pingpong table and pinball machine, and look at how you're going to use them. This will give you an accurate idea of just what kind of space you'll need (and whether the room you want to convert is really big enough) and how best to arrange your new entertainment room when you bring the games inside.

Now that you have a plan for adding on your game room, it's not too early to toy with some ideas for furnishing it.