I needed floor protection – bad. No way was I going to load up that new gameroom with games and not have something under the feet – especially after personally installing the new flooring! I spent weeks and countless hours reviewing Pinside threads and came to this answer for my laminate flooring. Works very well and, no the felt bottom pieces do not slide out from under the Pinball Life silicone footsies. They stay put. Almost like they are glued on. In fact, many times when I lift the machines, the felt stays in place even though there is no adhesive at all. My only (small) issue with the entire setup is I wish the felt was even a little more “slippery” on the laminate floor. I believe my perspective is impacted by my prior game room where the floor was hardwood with a semi-gloss finish. This engineered laminate has more of a matte finish and thus is a little more sticky with the felt. All and all a great solution for me
I had finished a logo a while back and now thought it was important to use on more than just paper and business cards. I researched logo signs on the internet and saw quite a few that had used metal to great effect as a background. I knew that my sign would be round and also knew that the company “RoadTrafficSigns.com” would be making it (they made all the traffic control signs on the ranch property). It would be painted metal. The mounting material was an easy decision – simply use leftover pieces of the cedar planking that I framed out the sleeping loft with.
Now I had to find some metal. I was in the market for some ramp protective scraps of stainless so I started by looking for metal fabricators in town that sold scraps. I found one, visited them and on the way out the door saw this beautiful piece of perforated heavy gauge metal laying the in scrap bin. I think the manager mistook it for gold plated because it cost me $80 but I HAD to have it. I came home, fabricated the whole thing up, added some color changing LEDs to the reverse and the outcome was better than I had hoped for!
I shared earlier in the blog that the LED lighting was going to be an engineering challenge. It’s certainly took a huge amount of time to plan the install and get the right equipment ordered. The install was the easy part.
The LED strip was mounted in the newly hung MDF molding I had just routed – around 5″ down from the ceiling. I wanted it to reflect off the white ceiling because in many cases would be the sole light supply while in the room playing games. I’ve installed a smaller version of this at my previous home and that is how we used the room 90% of the time. As you can see from my previous posts, I’ve got plenty of regular lighting when it’s needed for working on games, etc. (over 20 can lights in the ceiling)
This will be around 200′ of 10MM 5050 LED lights at 4 watts per foot power consumption. To reduce voltage drop and make certain the brightness is even, I’ll need to run parallel runs of 32 feet each AND, importantly, I’m using 24 volt stuff. More expensive than 12 volt but necessary.
I’ll be using 2 of these silver “Meanwell 600 watt” power supplies, 4 of the RF receivers and about a dozen reels of the 24 volt LED strips.
Each PS will drive a little under a hundred feet of LED lights or about 375 watts – well within the tolerances of the PS
All of the RF receivers will be linked and will receive signals from a wall mounted RF transmitter (the remote looking thingy with a color wheel)
I mounted the Meanwell power supplies and the associate RF controllers on a scrap piece of white melamine. That entire assembly was then mounted in opposing corners of the room using a few cabinet screws to ensure I was secure in the studs. I covered the entire assembly using some decorative perforated metal I got from Home Depot
I got it all installed, waiting for darkness and threw the power switch. How did it work? Well watch the videos that documented the first time I turned them on and you be the judge!
OK – time to hang the dreaded ceiling fans … only problem is that I had to hang THREE of them. Ugh. It took a few hours but I got them up and functioning. It’s rare that they are needed as the Loft has a dedicated HVAC unit and it stay cool even in summer with all the games on.
There are 2 stages to wiring a house. The rough wiring which you saw that I completed earlier, before insulation and before sheetrock. Then the finish wiring. The finish part involves striping each outlet, connecting to the appropriate fixture (usually a switch or outlet), mounting the fixture and lastly adding the cosmetics covers/plates. In order to pull of that off, I had to first find the right type of outlet and switch covers that would match the aesthetics of the room. I got lucky. I ordered two sets from amazon as samples and one of them was simply perfect with its beading edge outline and mix of copper and bronze hues. I did not need many of these because most of the outlets were hidden behind machines so I used the everyday plastic covers for those areas. I went white on the walls and brown where there was stained wood
Took a break to admire the beauty of this ranch I’m so blessed to live on. God builds some beautiful summers here in east TN.
Every single decision in the building of the Pinball Loft took great care and sometime significant time. When you are buying 10+ (expensive) surge protectors, you really do have to research them and “choose well”. I chose the Tripp-Lite brand with 7 outlets and am glad I did. They have worked well in my situation and although in many cases I have utilized the entire strip (all 7 outlets), I’ve not had the need for more. They have yet to trip either inadvertently or from a surge. So far so good
Somewhere along the way, I started to get this nagging feeling that in order to set up 40 games, I probably needed the best tools I could find. I bought an Escalara from Zach at Flippin Out Pinball. This was a no brainer but took a few conversations and a bunch of research first. My stairs were straight but the landing at the top was a little tricky. In the end I went with the shorter version – glad I did as it worked out perfectly. With “getting them up the stairs” solved, I now needed a way to “get them upright, with the legs on”. There is no (great) tool to do that. However, there is one that you can make.
I saw this build idea ages ago and it just looked a little to McGyver to create… but with a 40+ pin move ahead of me … well, let’s just say I got motivated to find the easiest way to set up/take down a pin! I am pretty good at doing it alone even now. Add front legs, tilt toward yourself until front legs hit BUT it’s right at this spot that it gets hard. You got to slip your hands into the wire passage in the cabinet, grab the edges and lift until you can get your hands under the cabinet. Then maneuver your 4×4 post (or whatever you use) under the cab to support it while you add the rear legs. It’s the same issue during test down but in reverse.
This tool eliminates that pain point entirely by using an RV stabilizer Jack to do the lifting or setting down – very cool. During the move (and since then) It has been a LIFESAVER and if you have a lot of games or MOVE your games often (routing/sales/trading) this is the cats meow.
- I got the aluminum angle stock at Home Depot
- I had 3/4″ plywood on hand to cut 3 pieces at 12x12x12″
- I used my redneck compass (string on a pencil) to cut my radius into each of the side boards
- On top of the Jack, I drilled a hole to store that drill adapter or I knew I’d never find the darn thing
The jack is an RV stablizer jack I ordered from Amazon.
Well it’s official … it’s moving day! That means a lot of things, the largest of which is work. heavy work, lots of heavy work! I had pins stored in the spare room off the dining area (pictured here wrapped in black plastic near Spiderman. I had pins stored in that same house but down in the basement – that image is the one with Theater of Magic in the middle. That basement room house around 17 games. I had not played them in over 2 years. I also had a few games opened and playable (in the kitchen) and a few that I had just bought still sitting in the pole barn. All of them were about to make the journey from the original ranch house on the property to our new home just 300 feet away.
A simple example of the amount of work ahead of me. It wasn’t just the 40 games … I had 10 subwoofers, all the legs and coin boxes and mountains of parts to move as well. My back was already groaning at the thought of it all.
Thank goodness I had the foresight to tag and bag all the various keys, parts and legs when I broke all the machines down several years earlier. Even so, there was some confusion getting the right legs to the right machines – especially around the Stern machines. I have a lot of modern Sterns and the legs have very subtle differences among each – I eventually sorted it out.
The first machines were to come from the upstairs area of the old ranch house. The first machine on the trailer was Ghostbusters. We made several trips just to get the upstairs machines moved. I shrink wrapped them and padded where needed but did not secure the machines on the trailer. Chris rode in the back with them and I drove VERY slow. The trade off was that we gained a tremendous amount of time not having to tie off each load.
For the basement area, it was much more convenient to get the Ranger out and use it to move the trailer. That area is tight behind the house and requires 4WD because of a small hill. I was able to safely move all of those games in about 4 different loads. The Ranger pulled a 12′ trailer and 6 Pinball machines uphill with ease
Once brought to the new house, we staged the games in the huge garage (it’s an 8 stall build that has just 5 stalls utilized – the remaining “stall area” is used as interior rooms in the house (Theater and Massage/workout rooms). I had just purchased a brand new Escalara stairclimber and bought a spare battery for it – knowing how much use it was about to get. I can’t tell you how pleased I have been with it. You can see the number of steps we were confronted with to get up into the Loft. The Escalara did it on just a few battery charges and without a hitch. 40 machines without breaking a sweat or my back.
Whatever you do, don’t stop reading now. The next part is the ending and it’s a good one – in fact its great! Click to the final chapter in the Loft build and you’ll see our move in pics and lots of images of what it looks like today. Pinball machines, gadgets, collectibles, artwork and more!
Continue story at Part 4 (Final)
Return to Part 2
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