Arcade Stuff > My Game Room
My Game Room
In late 2006, Jenna and I purchased a house together. It was bigger than the house I used to have, and had a bonus room above the garage. I had always wanted a game room, but the old house didn't have the space for it. So, we decided that this would be it. The room itself was oddly shaped and rather drab, as you can see below.
We decided to go with a space theme, and chose purple and green as our main colors. We went with Behr paint from Home Depot, and chose the colors "Purple Balloon" (S-G-640) and "Sparkling Apple" (S-G-430), as together they made for a bright, alien-ish feel.
After all the painting was done, we added in a few things to dress the place up (and really drive home the space theme), and lugged the heavy arcade cabinet and pinball machine to the room. We are absolutely thrilled with the results. It ended up looking like this:
We went with cubes from Target for storage of all the weird little arcade parts, computer components, and such that I have hanging around due to my hobbies. We already had the CD/DVD rack, and decided to keep it up here too. There is also a shelf above the arcade cabinet displaying some various 80's toys.
One of the fun little touches is this set of Space Invaders wall decals that I picked up from Blik Surface Graphics. In person, they look like I spent a long time painting them onto the wall with nice glossy paint. They really "pop" too, which is nice.
We're still working on this corner of the room, which is mainly a seating area for waiting in line or playing with the PS2 or Wii. As you can see, we have these really cool planet-themed curtains to block out the light from outside. Jenna made them herself. She also made the matching pillow shown here, and the funky orange cover for the ottoman. She's working on covers for the couch and chair cushions as well. Once that's done, I plan to paint the wooden parts of the couch and chairs to match that black end table. The end table was a $10 yard sale pickup that I refinished myself. Also note the LED lights running around the floor of the room. They're purple like the walls.
In keeping with the space theme, I decided to do something a little crazy with the air conditioning vent covers - I turned them into flying saucers. I sprayed them with shiny silver paint, and glued on some little plastic laser guns, shiny stones, and some other stuff. The dome in the middle is a plastic dome painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. When you turn the lights out, it glows. The saucers are each unique, and are positioned to look like they're dueling.
Last, but not least, is the light fixture in the center of the room. I found this glass with an interesting moon-like texture to it, so I decided to go with it. I stenciled on some little characters and ships to add to the effect. The really neat part, which you can't see here, is that I lightly sprayed the inside of the glass with glow-in-the-dark paint. So, if you turn the light on for a while and then turn it off again, it will continue to glow with an eerie green color.
Well, that's it for now. It's still a work in progress, but it has already been a big hit at parties and such. I will add more pictures as we add more cool stuff to it.