Add Value to Your Home with a Game Room

A Bankrate.com article talks about how you can increase the value of your home by adding a game room to it. Why is what was once a luxury now more in demand? It all boils down to time:

"People's time is just too tight," says Ernst. "It's really a function of time. They find the rooms offer a great space where you can have your friends over, have fun and not feel like they're abandoning the family."

"With home values going up, people feel it is a better investment to have their money in their homes than in the stock market," says Ernst. "If I invest $100,000 or $150,000 in a specialty space, my house will be worth that much more now and will appreciate more over the years than the stock market."

But you need to be careful how you add a game room. For instance, do it this way:

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.

But don't do it this way:

"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." 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."

Here's some advice:

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

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.

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.

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.

If you'll pardon me now, I need to show this post to my wife -- and get started on my own specialized game room. ;-)

Update: Time to link to the Beltway Traffic Jam.

Comments

[javasoy]

I would remain skeptic about this article. After all, everyone quoted was either a bank (who wants loan you money), a contractor (who wants your money), and a real estate professional (who wants your money too).