Game Room Makeover & Tour: Come See Our Nerdy Stuff!

Now that the big renovation at the other house is done, John and I are back to working on our own house. It's been nice getting offline and working on something tangible this week; gets me out of my own head, so to speak, and gives me something fun to focus on.

John's Fan Cave was our first priority, as it was bursting with clutter and the last room in the house to still have carpet, which is a huge dust trap and far too tempting for cats to pee and/or chew on. (Arg.)

 Just... so much stuff.

More of the Before:

The art situation had gotten out of control - we'd been tacking up frames willy-nilly, and were flat out of space -  and the big wall unit was so cram-packed you couldn't focus on anything. Total dusty chaos.

Getting all that huge furniture out was half the battle, but let's pick up here:

 

That's old terrazzo underneath.

 

This laminate is the same John used in the renovation house. It's from Home Depot, cheap, and the easiest he's ever installed - you can see he did the whole room in about an hour and a half. Anyway, A++, would recommend.

Here comes one of my favorite upgrades:

 

And here's how the wires come out in the corner:

 

I love this, since we have a lot of wires to hide! (Mostly speakers; we love our surround sound.)

 

John is a sentimental pack rat, so it took some convincing to get him to purge and prioritize a little. He came around once I pointed out all the new art he's been wanting to hang, and that we could dedicate a whole wall to Harry Potter. At this point John did a full 180, and declared he wanted the walls Hufflepuff yellow. (Aw yeeeah.)

Now, take it from a former pro painter: yellows are scary. To keep it from going too bright or sickly, we color matched our favorite Hufflepuff pillow, which is more of a neutral gold:

 Those are night shots, so it's a lot less mustard-y in real life - you'll see in a sec.

Loading all the furniture back in like:

This made me laugh way too hard. At least I amuse myself.

The next night we started tackling the art:

This paper trick is SO USEFUL, you guys. I can't recommend it enough if you've got several pieces to hang.

Now here's the (mostly) finished room!

New flooring, paint, window shades, and streamlined art in mostly neutral colors. (It turns out almost all of John's favorite pieces are black-and-whites or muted tones, which look great on the yellow walls!)

I know the Lady & the Tramp painting sticks out like a sore thumb with that green, but John won't part with it. (I painted it for him like 15 years ago.) So I think I'll repaint the background to get rid of the green - maybe a darker yellow, or a soft gray/blue? What do you guys think?

This is a tiny 10X10 room, so bear with me as I spin around and give you the whole tour:

That's the Hufflepuff pillow we color-matched in the chair. It's the prettiest pillow in the world and well worth the money - go check out the Etsy seller to see the other Houses, too.

 

 Our new Harry Potter wall. We love it so much.

To save space the door to this room is actually a bi-fold. A little weird, yes, but the added space let us fit the big wall unit beside it:

This is visually overwhelming at this angle, but in real life you're so close to it that you're focusing on individual shelves, so it's not so bad. (Plus it used to be much worse; this is the pared-down version!)

We're hoping to build a wall mount for Figment - get him off that stand and a little closer to that wall, so he won't stick out so far.

 

The shelves are continually evolving, but I'm pretty happy with this latest set-up. I'll give you a closer look at them all in a sec, keep scrolling.

This new window shade is fine but boring, so we'd like to add a Hogwarts crest in the middle. Still debating how best to do that, though: fabric applique? Paint? Iron-on t-shirt transfer? Let me know if you guys have any ideas! I'd like Hogwarts on this one and the Hufflepuff crest on the smaller shade:

Hi, Suki. (She's lying on John's laptop because it's warm, ha.)

Another look at our favorite art wall:

I commissioned this Kreacher from Isabell Angell for John's birthday, then surprised him with it early for the makeover. Kreacher is John's favorite HP character, and this scene is the one John cites every time he's asked why:

John and I both got teary over this. I'm just sayin', if you ever get the chance to hear John's passionate explanation for why Kreacher is the best Harry Potter character, do so.

(John re-sized a thrift store frame for that, btw; still one of our favorite DIYs.) 

We also added a little Luna feeding a baby thestral by Ben Byrd, because ermergersh:

I promise I won't go through ALL the art - though I'm tempted.  

Ok, maybe a few more:

Catbus and Belle getting a tattoo!

And finally, let me show you the shelves I'm so proud of. John gives me free rein on these, and I like to arrange each one by theme:

 

Oh! That reminds me, here's a fun upcycle: The Sorting Hat is sitting on this display stand:

And that stand is actually the top of our old floor lamp, just turned upside down:

We never used that top light, so John took the lamp apart and converted it into a single short goose-neck, so it wouldn't block the art:

As I was about to toss the leftover top piece, you might say a light bulb went off. :D :D :D

So we jammed a big styrofoam ball on the end of the pole, and voila! A hat stand! You can barely see it under the hat, but that's kind of the point:

There's a blast from the past: remember when I made my Portal lemon grenade?

Quick Tip for shelf displays: keep lots of small sturdy boxes and lids on hand to use as risers: it's all about getting that back stuff up high!

More sentimental tidbits. I've learned the hard way to be careful what I give to John, because he will never ever part with it. (That card was one of my first attempts at watercolor; he snatched it out of the trash.)

Ok, I think I've sufficiently bored you guys with Show & Tell over here.

I hope you liked the tour! Let me know if you have any ideas for those Hogwarts crests for the curtains, and I'll update again once we have them installed.

Also let me know if you have questions about any of the art! Pretty much everything in here is by people we love, so I'm more than happy to link you to the artists if you see something you like.

Happy weekend, everyone!