Designing a room of doom from the ground up

[chadtower]

Remember this: Basements are accident prone. Especially to flooding(in a basement there is nowhere for the water to go, but up), i was on this comic book forum and some guy lost a chunk of his collection because his comic boxs were sittong on the floor. If flooding is a threat to you than build shelves, and other things a foot or so above the floor, or get plastic cases for things sitting on the floor. Also you may want to put some very bright lights in your basement, dim ones make things seem depressing, or make you room seem like a "lair" for an anti-social recluse. When you bring people down there for the first time you want em' to go "whooooooaaaa!!!", and not "ewwwww"...........And of course there's always strobe lights, and lava lamps

I've never had water in my basement and there is no evidence that there has ever been water in my basement. The only real water related accident I could foresee would be related to plumbing (water heater bursting, etc).

I'm basically trying to decide if I would want to make it purely a gaming room, or a home theatre that is skewed towards gaming. A home theatre would likely have a projector in there along the lines of the Infocus projector that's been discussed here before... but a purely gaming room would not.

[Flack]

I have been planning a rotating coffee table for quite some time now. There are a few problems I haven't been able to figure out yet, but I'll tell you how I came to where I'm at.

My AV room upstairs has a big screen on one wall and a projector on the other. I do not want a table between me and the screen when watching movies. What I decided I wanted was a rolling "cart", for lack of a better word, with multiple systems on it. The thing is, I don't want it to look like a rolling cart, so I came up with the idea of it being a "coffee table on wheels", with systems on all four sides. Then I thought that was overkill, so I came up with the idea of just shelves on both sides. I figure I could easily put four systems per side, and then wheel the table into place depending on which side the system is I want to play. Then I would have a set of master cables that go to my projector that would be coiled up that I could just plug into the master console sitting on top of the unit.

I don't know, just a crazy idea. Let me know if that's of any assistance.

[chadtower]

My AV room upstairs has a big screen on one wall and a projector on the other. I do not want a table between me and the screen when watching movies. What I decided I wanted was a rolling "cart", for lack of a better word, with multiple systems on it. The thing is, I don't want it to look like a rolling cart, so I came up with the idea of it being a "coffee table on wheels", with systems on all four sides. Then I thought that was overkill, so I came up with the idea of just shelves on both sides. I figure I could easily put four systems per side, and then wheel the table into place depending on which side the system is I want to play. Then I would have a set of master cables that go to my projector that would be coiled up that I could just plug into the master console sitting on top of the unit.

That's not so crazy an idea, actually. You route the signal from each console to one set of a/v ports, or maybe even just to a switchbox. Either way you only have one set of cables to run from the video source to the projector.

What piques my interest here is the presence of both a bigscreen and a projector. Why is this?

[dogbowl2]

I converted a small room in my house into a room of doom, however I think that we may have had different goals in mind.

I don't play games in this room, its more of an area to store and display all of my games. The only TV in there is a circa 1978 Sony (cause I like playing my 2600 the way it was meant to be).

I tend to keep most of my systems in thier original boxes, woth only one hooked up to the TV at a time. and I also tend to keep my games in their original boxes.

So that being said, I went with IKEA Billy bookcases. They're not too deep and totaly extensible so you can do what you want with them (add doors, extend the top, half height only, etc). For the boxed systems, I built shelves up close to the ceiling. That way, they don't take up as much real estate and you can display them nicely. (My shelves are about 2 feet below the ceiling, wrapped around the room)

[wberdan]

You might want to consider acoustical tiles for the ceiling. My wife can hear me playing Colony Wars from the 3rd floor.

Already in the plans... acoustical drop ceiling.

If you just use suspended ceiling tiles, this is NOT going to cut down on sound transmission much.
If you absolutely must have a dead cellar, then do the suspended ceiling, but place as many Owens Corning Acoustical Fiberglas Batts up above it.
Stuff it full. Just be prepared for your room to be possibly uncomfortable afterwards.

Although really- if you dont play music or games too loud you should be ok with just a suspended ceiling.


As for shelving- I am a big fan of the completely adjustable wall shelves. I buy the shelf "rails" at home depot and run them floor to ceiling, and then put whatever boards you want on them.
The problem with doing that where you are, is that you will have to use an airgun or something to get the spikes into the cement...
Or you can frame the room with wood, but it will make it a little smaller.

Put more outlets in there than you think you'll need,

thats about all I have to say on that..
I am in the process of doing something similar- I should be in my new house with dedicated game room/closet soon.
That room will allow me to do a huge area of floor to ceiling shelves, and place a tv near a wall that has a closet behind it. By having the closet there I can run cables to DVD players or certain systems without having them out in the room.

willie

[chadtower]

If you just use suspended ceiling tiles, this is NOT going to cut down on sound transmission much.

At this point I'm not planning on putting a ton more than this... there is plumbing and wiring along those floor joists that I don't want to close in with a permanent ceiling.

As for shelving- I am a big fan of the completely adjustable wall shelves. I buy the shelf "rails" at home depot and run them floor to ceiling, and then put whatever boards you want on them.
The problem with doing that where you are, is that you will have to use an airgun or something to get the spikes into the cement...
Or you can frame the room with wood, but it will make it a little smaller.

I'm going to finish the room, which would be fully framed and finished walls. It will look like the upstairs and the rest of the house (possibly better). While you're right about the shelf rails, I think I'm going to go higher quality than that simply because of the amount of work I'm going to be putting in anyway.

I am in the process of doing something similar- I should be in my new house with dedicated game room/closet soon.
That room will allow me to do a huge area of floor to ceiling shelves, and place a tv near a wall that has a closet behind it. By having the closet there I can run cables to DVD players or certain systems without having them out in the room.

You know, I've been thinking about just this concept too. The back of the proposed room will have a storage closet behind it (well, really a closet where the oil tank is). I was thinking I could use that area there as a central wiring point similar to a network room for a large computer network but on a much smaller scale.