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Tomorrow, Carey and I are going to do something we should have done awhile back: get set up with the Millcreek teacher's credit union. We'll have her checks direct deposited in there and essentially attempt to pretend that we're a single-income family (mine).

Then, if we build the game room, we'll have a credit union to use for the equity loan and they can direct deduct from that account. We'll probably catch a good break on that. I'd like to have the game room built this winter - I've got projects lined up that will more than cover it (if my guesses re: the cost are accurate - see below). I always work harder when I've got something "to pay for," and the prime rate keeps going up and up and up, and building costs have risen something like 33% the past few years. We'll see…

This entry has some pictures of the area above the garage, some diagrams and schematics I've drawn, and so forth. It's mostly for my own use, but if you know about construction, by all means have a peek.

As I mentioned before, the game room would go above the garage. When the original owners had this house built, they had the option to turn it into a room at that time but chose not to, so I think it's just about ready to be turned into a room. As seen below, there are some roof supports that would have to be re-arranged, but it doesn't seem to be something that would require much effort. I think the project may spec out to $8-$10k for framing, subfloor, door, and drywall. Carey and I may do a lot of the rest of the work (flooring, painting, decorating, etc.) on our own.

House Layout

The layouts you see here improve slightly on the layouts I posted in one of my first entries on the house. It's still not perfect - I should just ask for a copy of the blueprints or something so I can get these down pat, but it's good enough to illustrate the point(s). These aren't labeled, but I know what they are and you can look at the previous ones if you're curious.

Here is how the addition would look. The fringe red area shows the area that would be walled off. The area over the kitchen, you'll note, is empty because the kitchen has a skylight.

Today I crawled into the space above the garage using the currently installed pull-down steps. The white lines I've drawn on my house will make more sense in a bit…

Here is what the interior of the "game room" looks like right now (below). We found a left over sled and some vertical blinds, but basically there are some joists holding up the roof and we'd have to relocate them or create horizontal beams or something. I don't know - I'm not a builder. But I'm certain it can be done pretty easily.

The white lines on the outside should make a little more sense now. The top image is shot from the steps towards the street/garage doors. To the left, a series of vertical posts creates a wall that's about 5' tall. It's blocked off because the skylight and kitchen are further to the left. The half-roof you can see straight ahead. I drew two white lines in to better illustrate the "corner" between the slant of the roof and the vertical wall.

On the bottom, I went past the sled to the front of the house and shot back towards the steps and to the left. Since this portion of the roof goes most of the way towards the edge of the house, we'd probably build a wall out around 3' in height to gain as much room as we could. 3' is plenty of space for lots of things. But since the room would be 20 x 20, we could always shorten that dimension to get a little more height. I'd rather have the extra floor space, of course, but it may be a building issue, too. I don't know.

To the right, rough (very) mockups of what I imagine the room may look like. We could probably go slightly taller than an 8' ceiling in the middle if we just put some supports across them, which would provide more room to hang a pool table light. The door would be off-center and to the left, I believe, towards the taller wall. Quite honestly, I don't know how they'd do the ceiling, but 20' x 20' is a good amount of room. A 9' pool table with the longer cues requires a playing area of basically 14' x 18', so appended to the diagram, that looks like this:

The red zone in both the top and side views indicate the area in which a cue could possibly be. The 4.5' x 9' is the playing surface only - the actual table is a little bigger - but the playing area is what matters as you need not worry about fitting a cue between anything but a ball on the table and the wall. Furniture - a bar, stools, couches, etc. - can be fitted around the room so long as they're not much taller than the pool table because they won't interfere with the stroke. If the table is moved towards closer to the street (up in the top image), then some furniture of almost any sort can be pushed along the opposite wall as it will be out of reach for even the longest cue on the 9' table.

We'll See

My measurements tell me that the room is 23' x 23', and my last diagram in particular documents a 20' x 20' room. Clearly we won't lose a 1.5' on every wall, but I wanted to be sure there was room. Plus, if I badly estimated where the 3' mark on the one wall is, taking such big chunks off allows for some "slop" and "play" in the figures.

The builder of the home is coming out tomorrow (well, it's 1:08am right now, so technically today) to have a look at the house and refresh his memory. I'll be interested in what he sees and has to say. Perhaps I can snag some pictures of the plans (if he brings them).

Anyway, I'll know more by lunchtime… who knows? My dream may be shattered by then. 😛

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