Dale Yu: The New and Improved Game Room
Well, I was going to write a huge article on the things I love to have in my game room (since I now have a new game room!), but Mary Prasad beat me to it! (If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend taking a gander at her article on game room accessories.)
Instead, I’m going to concentrate on a few things about my new recreational space, and it will take the form of a photo essay… Smaller pics will show up on the screen as you read the column, but you can click on the pictures to see the full-size pics!
As I mentioned last week, we’ve finished remodeling the basement, a space that has pretty much been given to the men in the household (myself and the two boys). After spending most of my free time last week, I’ve finally managed to get all of the games back up on the shelves. I’ve also started to catalog my games, the first time in over five years that I’ve tried to inventory and organize my collection. In the past, I’d always just given a rough estimate of the collection – and I had always guessed that it was around 800. However, after counting them all up, I was surprised to discover that I still have well over 1,000 games (the full list for the curious) despite selling off more than 200 games in the past year! (Let me get in a quick shoutout of thanks to the CABS members who helped get another 52 games out of the collection last week!)
I’ve managed to get most of the games out into the open with the remodel. Before we redid the basement, my game collection was crammed onto Plano plastic shelves in a basement storage closet. There was some organization, but mostly I was trying to maximize the space that I had, so I had boxes piled upon boxes with almost no organization. My system to find a game was simply to try to remember where I had last put it away. It wasn’t a great system, and the fact that the shelves were hidden made it very difficult to introduce people to my favorite hobby as none of my games could be found in the house to serve as a conversation starter. To make things worse, the old basement was only partially finished, so it wasn’t the kind of place that we were going to take people to while entertaining!
While getting the games into the open is a plus, I’ve had to give up about 40% of my original storage space as a result of the remodel. As you’ve likely read in this column, I’ve been trying to sell off games over the past year in anticipation of this reduced storage space. I also had to undergo a fairly painful purge in the past week where I sent a lot of my incomplete thrift store finds to the trash dump (finally) – though not before I cannibalized all the boards and interesting looking bits for prototype use! I also ended up combining all of the children’s games in one area. No longer will there be “kids games for the kids” and “kids games reserved for me” – I’m hoping that I don’t lose too many components to my beloved kids games!
However, things have changed since we’ve redone the room. We now have about 900 square feet of space for fun! Here is the view as you walk down the stairs from the main portion of the house:
In the foreground you can see the couches (for the TV area), the pool table in the middle of the room, and the game shelves that line the back wall. You’ll also notice, on the left, the huge box for the new TV. While I’ll do a lot of things for the BGN readership, taking out the trash before it’s time is not one of them!
Before we get to the games, let me walk in front of the game shelves and give a picture of the other side of the basement (that you couldn’t see in the last picture). This side of the room is more for the kids. The Nintendo Wii will be hooked up to the TV as well as a DVD player for their movies. The door you can see just to the left of the TV is a little closet formed from the space underneath the staircase. We’re calling it the “Harry Potter” room, and it’s a storage closet for the kids and their toys. There is also another storage closet, which you can barely see hiding behind the corner of the pool table which holds the children’s games.
But enough about the kids, let’s get back to the real attraction: the games!
As you likely noticed in the first picture, the shelves are split into two sections (currently cleverly named “the left side” and “the right side"). The door that splits the shelves is the door to the garage, in case you’re interested. Anywho, here is a better view of the left side of the shelves. There are essentially three built in bookcases with a cabinet underneath each one. Another nice feature of the new basement is that the window casement provides me a nice shelf to show off my Hu-Dey beer cans (made especially for the Bengals’ trip to Super Bowl XVI by a local brewery) – there’s still beer inside those cans, but I’m fairly certain that I won’t ever be drinking it!
But what could possibly be in those cabinets? Tribbles? Magic: the Gathering cards? Cases of Jelly Babies? Of course not! The cabinets hold pull-out shelving!
Originally, the plan was to have three shelves in each cabinet; but once I tried to start fitting the games on the shelves, it became apparent that I would have a really hard time fitting in some of the middle-sized games. Thus, we pulled out one shelf from the leftmost cabinet to give me more height to store some of these taller games.
The rest of the shelves were sized specifically to hold either an Amigo card box or the small alea size box. They are fairly deep (23-1/2 inches) and can hold quite a number of games! Though the contractor I used thought I was crazy for wanting shelves that could fully extend (rather than the typical three-quarter extension), it’s quite nice to be able to see all the games on the shelf. On this particular shelf, I was able to get 31 games of this size!
Here is one of the shelves that has more of the Amigo-sized card games on it. There are too many here for me to count. I have three shelves that are chock full like this one with teeny-tiny card games.
But enough about the cabinets - generally they’re hidden behind the doors so that the inherent clutter of the small boxes is hidden from everyone. It’s the shelves that I’m really excited about! As we were making the measurements for the shelves, the contractor specifically asked to see what types of boxes I needed to store. He took all sorts of meticulous measurements of the different boxes, and I must say that I’m extremely impressed with the results. As I mentioned above, the shelves are made specifically to fit particular boxes. The height of some were made specifically for the Kosmos big boxes while the width of the shelves was designed to allow for three-wide storage of the more typical Eurogame box.
The long Ravensburger boxes were also nicely accomodated in the design as well - I thought that I had been clever by trying to make sure the width of the opening would also hold 10 games perfectly, but the fact that boxes have differing depths derailed that somewhat.
Well, that’s pretty much it for the “left side”. On the “right side”, you’ll notice that the shelves aren’t quite as uniform. There was a bit of low-hanging ductwork in the basement that we couldn’t reroute, so we just lowered the ceiling around it! It’s different, and I’d like to think that it gives the shelves some character!
You’ll notice that the shelves on this side also have cabinets underneath them. However, on the “right side”, there are no cool pull-out shelves. Instead, there are regular old-fashioned fixed shelves which are deep enough to let me store larger games that can’t fit on the built-in shelves above. (And yes, the contractor did measure my longer games in order to correctly determine the overall depth of the cabinets...)
When we initially saw the plans for the cutout needed for the ductwork, my wife was a little worried about the weird shape the uppermost shelf would take. However, I reassured her that I would be able to use the space perfectly! While it’s not a perfect fit, it’s not too shabby…
The other oddity about the right side is that the shelves all had to be a few inches narrower (in order for the three bookcases to be equal in width). As a result, you can’t fit three standard boxes across on this side. I’ve made do the best that I can, and the juxtaposition of vertical and horizontal games doesn’t look overly cluttered IMHO.
These slightly narrower shelves also gave me a chance to store some of my larger games on the outside shelves (instead of in the cabinets). After all, I don’t think I was going to be able to keep Hotel Life, Roads & Boats or my Age of Steam mega-expansion box hidden in the cabinet!
So, here is another view of the game shelves from the extreme right side. Due to some nifty foreshortening from the angle, it’s almost impossible to tell that the bookcases on the right are narrower than those on the left.
Well, before the renovation, remember how I had told you that most of my games were in a storage closet? Part of the storage closet was incorporated into the new finished space, but some was left behind so we could still store stuff! Here’s what is currently still back in the storage room - it’s nice to have space to easily access my Crokinole boards as well as my Spinball board. (They’re in the large cardboard boxes in the center.) It’s much less cluttered now than in the past. In the old setup, I had an four additional sets of plastic shelves holding up stuff in the space that you can see. You can only imagine how cramped it was in that old room! Right now, these shelves represent my only room for growth, though after whittling down the collection over the past year, I probably have space for 100-150 games total on these shelves.
The games back here aren’t all drek, though! I still keep my collection of 3M games back here, as well as all of my word games and all of my soccer-related games. While many of these games are “good” enough to be on public display on the main shelves, the OCD part of me couldn’t imagine splitting up the 3M collection so I could keep Acquire “in public” while I left the rest in the closet!
Is that all of the games? Not quite, as there’s one more place to look. Remember how I pointed out the kids games closet back in the second picture? Well, here’s what’s inside! (Note that I had to cheat and take over the uppermost shelf in this closet for the GameMaster series as well as the Loopin’ Louies!
So that’s the guided tour of my new game room! I’m really looking forward to hosting people over soon for games! I think that we’ll likely have space for 3-4 tables in the basement without moving any furniture, so it should be able to accomodate just about any gathering of mine.
So what else was I going to talk about? Well, I was going to create an exhaustive list of the things that I really like to have in my game room, but again, Mary has beaten me to the punch. Instead, let me just highlight a few of my “necessities”:
Tables: While standard fold-out card tables are great, they’re actually a little low on space for some games. With the new shelves, we could possibly use the surface in front of the bookcases as an extension of the table for storage. However, I have a few other solutions for this problem. First, I have two gate-fold tables – you can just make out the shape of one on the very left of the third picture above. Here is the page of the Ikea table that is quite similar to one of my tables. The other table is more like this with the four wooden chairs stored in the space underneath the table leaves. I like having both of these tables around because they can be compact when not in use. Additionally, as you can choose to raise one side or both, the size of the table can be customized to the number of players or space needed.
Table extensions: The other table accessory that I’m glad to have are card table extensions. I have two right now. One is a simple round board that sits on top of the card table to convert it from a four-person square table to a six-person round table. The other addition is a octagonal poker tabletop - similar to this one - which is nice because it has areas to hold poker chips or other gaming bits.
Rubber bands: Though I know that many people hate putting rubber bands on their games, I have found it to be quite helpful, especially because I store many of my games on their side. I have found that File folder bands work really well; they are 7” long and can wrap around just about any game that I have. I had previously used four-way rubber bands as well, but they are simply too expensive for regular use.
Baggies: I’m a bagger. I pretty much feel compelled to bag all the bits up, so I keep plenty of bags around. I buy them in bulk, and often split orders with other local gamers. I’ve found that ULine and the Associated Bag Company have always provided quality bags at a cheap price. I usually have four or five different sizes around at any time.
Laminator: I love having a laminator around to help prepare some of the player aids that I download from the Internet. I have a pouch laminator similar to this one which has been invaluable over the years.
Paper cutter: I also couldn’t live without my paper-cutter which I use on just about every prototype I work on.
I think the rest of my usual supplies have been covered in enough detail by Mary, so I’m going to continue tidying up the basement now in order to play games soon!
CRAZY DALE’S GAME BAZAAR
You can download my current list of games for sale (which should be the worksheet of this Excel file labeled FOR SALE). As usual, if you’re interested, please contact me at BGNAdvisor@gmail.com . Buyer is responsible for all shipping, etc. I am not against trading; you can use the full inventory included in that file to see what I don’t already have, but really, I’m trying to pare down the collection so it’d have to be really, really good…
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists, Dale Yu / 2581
Comments:
You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!|
Looks great, Dale. OK, it looks fantastic. Especially the closet for the kids. Posted by Melissa Rogerson on May 7, 2008 at 02:03 AM | #
|
|
Thanks for sharing these pictures, Dale. What a night-and-day difference from when you first moved in! I like the clever pull-out shelving best. I’m a bagger, too, so let me know next time you’re putting together a bulk order. PS After reading a lot of fine articles at this site, it was *this* blog entry that prompted me to register with BGN. I’m not sure what that says about me. Posted by John McMillan on May 7, 2008 at 02:33 AM | #
|
|
DROOL! Some day I’ll have a room like that. Posted by Jim Cote on May 7, 2008 at 02:39 AM | #
|
|
Melissa - don’t forget, though the closet is for kids games… many of them are still “mine”! ;) John Mc- glad to have you aboard. I will let you know about the bags; likely in the next month or so… And, on the bright side, you’re invited to the basement-warming party! Ekted - you shouldn’t yell when you drool. It only makes it worse. D Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 07:26 AM | #
|
|
Oh, it’s for kids’ games? I thought it was where you put your kids when you wanted some peace and quiet. I was impressed by your foresight. Posted by Melissa Rogerson on May 7, 2008 at 07:34 AM | #
|
|
Melissa, well the closet under the stairs is for the kids. They actually like playing inside there… I thought you were talking about the closet in the pictures with the kids games! d Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 08:30 AM | #
|
|
Nice room Dale! We may have to build-in some of those drawers - great idea! The small games get lost on the shelves (tend to get buried behind other things) but in a drawer, they can remain easily accessible. I didn’t photograph our room so much as put in some examples of the shelving. We also have built-in bookcases on the other side of the clock (bank of 3) and tables along one side holding other games (Crokinole, Piraten Billards, bunch of little stuff) - that’s where I want to put more shelves/drawers. One thing I didn’t mention is lighting - your room looks to be well lit. We are thinking of replacing our current lights because they aren’t quite up to par (har har). Posted by Mary Prasad on May 7, 2008 at 10:11 AM | #
|
|
Mary, first- thanks for saving me all the writing about the other stuff - it was a great column! As far as the drawers go, apparently the standard slide-out units only go 3/4 of the way out. Those brackets cost about $5 each. Lowe’s had the full extension brackets at about $16 each. The extra $11 is more that worth it for the added usability of the shelves! Lighting was important for the game room. As you can see in the first picture, there are can lights all over the room - and we made sure that there was a line of can lights specifically over the areas where the gaming tables will be! I’m a big fan of good lighting for gaming, reading, or whatever. I really dislike dimly lit rooms. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 10:18 AM | #
|
|
Awesome job! That is beautiful! I’ve been planning a remodel of my garage/game room and now I am more motivated than ever. I only wish I had that much room to play with!
Bobby Posted by Bobby Doran on May 7, 2008 at 11:37 AM | #
|
|
Bobby - Wall coverings are on the list still to do! Though, I’ll probably defer to my wife’s interior decorating sense for that! dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 12:04 PM | #
|
|
Thanks Dale, I enjoyed your column too! I have a some decoration ideas I’m thinking about for our walls. Since I do so many puzzles, I am thinking about making several frames to fit them. (I do custom framing, goes with the photography!) They will be a rotating display. Since I may want to do the puzzles again (or give them to friends to do), I don’t want to glue them but rather sandwich them between the plexi and mount board - just not sure about the puzzle surfaces. Some surfaces may either stick or “melt” onto Plexiglas, which is one reason why there is usually space between the Plexiglas and what is being framed. Other items I’m thinking about: a signed photo of Reiner Knizia - there’s a story that goes with it :-D - a laminated map of the world on which I’ll mark where my husband and I have traveled, memorabilia (from both travels and game cons), Hard Rock Cafe pins (I have a big collection), and some unique stamps I have collected (I think I’ve managed to get one page of each of the Looney Tunes characters!). Posted by Mary Prasad on May 7, 2008 at 12:51 PM | #
|
|
Mary,
We also do all sorts of puzzles, especially Stave Puzzles - but I don’t see us putting them in frames! (http://www.stave.com) As far as the map goes, we just gave one to our parents http://www.hammacher.com/publish/11077.asp
They love it
Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 01:10 PM | #
|
|
That is nice… I was so happy when I moved to my new house, it already had shelves and cabinets built in the basement, which were nearly perfect for games, though I really like the storage you got in those drawers (that will be a new winter project :) ). Of course, I thought the oddest thing was that I noticed you had a Dyson vacuum cleaner… Posted by Kevin Devine on May 7, 2008 at 01:55 PM | #
|
|
Those are cool! I do 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 piece puzzles, usually Buffalo Games (http://www.buffalogames.com/products/) or Springbok (http://www.springbok-puzzles.com/). I like a lot of the Photomosiac puzzles (Buffalo). Right now I’m working on a 2,000 piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle in prep for our trip to Essen (afterwards we are going to visit the castle). :-) Posted by Mary Prasad on May 7, 2008 at 01:55 PM | #
|
|
Kevin - what’s odd about having a Dyson? The house actually has a central vacuum system, but it really sucks. (sic) Actually, it doesn’t suck well, and that’s the problem… So, we went with a Dyson - which works better than any other vacuum cleaner I’ve ever watched someone else use. Mary - sometime you should try the Stave puzzles. Palagyi and I often bring some to Gulf games; I’ll try to remember for Nashville Dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 01:58 PM | #
|
|
Sadly, we won’t be going to the next Gulf games (summer ones are difficult for Ravindra to get time off), but I’d love to see one of those puzzles in person - will email you. The map is beautiful; your parent must love it. Might be too nice for our game room though. I have a laminated one that I’m probably going to frame and use wet-erase markers on it. Posted by Mary Prasad on May 7, 2008 at 02:13 PM | #
|
|
Wow! Love the room and the color on the walls makes it look really warm. Do I see a Boccer Ball table? My kids had to have one of those after playing it at Gulf Games. I love my Dyson (as much as I could possibly love a vacumm cleaner). Picks up animal hair better than any other one I’ve tried. Mary - those Stave puzzles are evil. And addictive. But the prices make me just about pass out! Posted by SusanRoz on May 7, 2008 at 03:14 PM | #
|
|
Susan, 1) we debated long and hard about the color. Before we settled on orange, we were also looking at a maroon color - but that may have been too dark… 2) Yes, that is a BoccerBall table. I bought it about three years ago on a whim when I saw them on clearance at Meijer. Probably one of my best gaming values ever - picked it up for $35 new. 3) I will make no further comments about loving my vacuum cleaner lest you think I’m a perv 4) I try not to think about the cost of the Stave puzzles when my wife orders them! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 03:27 PM | #
|
|
1.The Aggie in me would have chosen maroon but it would’ve made the room look like a dungeon. 3. Perv?!? Not you, Dale ;-) Sigh. I wish we had basements here. I live on a giant rock. We hit limestone when we plant a tree. Posted by SusanRoz on May 7, 2008 at 03:35 PM | #
|
|
Susan, unfortunately for you, not Aggie maroon - it was a bit more red than that (brighter) Tracy quickly shot down my idea of gold and black (Vanderbilt colors) - our great room upstairs is already a creamy gold color, which is perfect for a Vandy theme, but would have made our whole house fairly monochromatic Dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 7, 2008 at 03:37 PM | #
|
|
Dale, it looks FANTASTIC! SUPER job! I can’t wait to see it in person. Posted by Greg Schloesser on May 7, 2008 at 03:50 PM | #
|
|
Two copies of Mush? Posted by Mike Siggins on May 8, 2008 at 01:44 PM | #
|
Next entry: Media Watch: Wits & Wagers Developer Q & A
Previous entry: JESS: Castellers by Reiner Knizia
