Trophy Room garage addition

I recently got married and we are currently living in a small house that my wife has owned for a few years. It is a temporary place for us....and we plan to move next summer into a larger home in a neighborhood.

My question is in regards to designing a trophy room. Currently I do not have space for any of my trophy collection, but the goal is to have a dedicated trophy room in our next house, without breaking the bank. As many of you probably know....finding a standard subdivision house with anything that even resembles a real "trophy room" is nearly impossible. Also, we are thinking of having a home built in a new neighborhood....which would make this entire process a little easier.

We want our new home to have a detached garage, so what I'm thinking is adding an entire room onto the back of said garage, with the intention of it being a trophy room. It needs to be one large room with 12 ft. ceilings to maximize wall space (all walls backed with 1/2 inch plywood), a half-bathroom, and a walk-through door from the outside (not from the garage). Also, thinking of putting a mini-split air conditioner. Do any of you have experience building something like this? If so, I'd like to hear any thoughts, comments, concerns, etc...

My trophy collection is not huge, but I probably have a few more heads than your average hunter (I believe I currently have a total of 27 mounts, of which about half are european mounts). I would like to have enough space for around 50 heads, plus a few pieces of wall art (photos, paintings, etc...) I also have a very nice pool table that I would like to put in the room.

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

I feel your pain.

I had all my mounts in storage for a year between my last two houses while we were in a rental.

Basically you have two options:

Build a house to your specs or buy one with an office that can double as a trophy room. I had prints done on a house we were gonna build that had a dedicated trophy room/office. Ran into problems with the builder and found a spec home closer into town that worked that had an office with tall ceilings where I put my mounts. I'm about out room and have a few mounts in the kitchen / dining area but it's better than nothing.

I just had a trophy room/shop built with my new barn. I am putting a mini split in also - you need to keep the room temp and humidity in control for preserving your heads. I also suggest using 1/2 or 3/4 inch plywood behind your walls - makes it much easier to hand heads.

Good luck with your project

I went with the high-ceiling office/trophy room option. (Sorry for the sideways pics I haven't figured out to handle that yet.)

IF we move, my cave will be attached to the house. Mine's seperate now, and sometimes that's a good thing , but not really convenient.

+1 on the plywood behind the sheetrock. But a word of warning - you're wife can become jealous of how quiet it is in there compared to the rest of the house.

how do you keep the pictures from turning sideways?

Frankly the only thing I really like about the house that's our home now is the trophy/game room...the only downside is that it's upstairs. I only have 6 deer shoulder mounts, a fox, goose, turkey, 1 euro and about 12 antler mounts. I also have wildlife photos covering the wall that I've taken over the years, WT, BT, and Mule Deer, Moose, Elk, Bighorn, and a variety of other small animals and birds. I need to get my eagle photo on the wall too. And I too have a pool table in the middle of the room.

If I think about it I will post pic/s later.

Dang NP, where did you buy all of those mounts?

When my wife and I built our new house a few years ago I let her design and decorate the entire house however she wanted, except for one room, my trophy room! I made it clear that it is my room and she has no say what happens in here. I built it with 12' walls and a vaulted ceiling that goes up to 18'. We used foam insulation in our home and I went ahead and foamed all the walls of my room, then wrapped them in 3/4" plywood. I thought about doing what you're describing but ultimately decided it would be better to have it as part of our home. The reason being was that it is where I like to be when I'm at home and if it was a separate detached structure I would want to be out there and my wife would be complaining about it. I'm glad I did it like we did as it's where our family spends the most time. Only mistake I made was that I didn't make it big enough. I'm not out of room yet, but it's coming! I have 5 life sized mounts at the moment and probably 10 or 12 shoulder mounts . So with that in mind, if you're going to build I'd suggest that however much room you think is enough, make it bigger!

There NP fixed them for ya.

(I'm so jealous of that desert)

Thanks!!

Rotate to landscape before you upload.

No, won't work. The solution is posted in one of my posts.

Here is my barn trophy room/shop/man cave - will be doing epoxy on floor and putting in mini split next week - then start hanging my heads

I'm out in the country with no code to worry about and plenty of space to do what I want. I'm in the process of remodeling my house that will include a 24x48 addition for my mounts. It will become our new living/great room. The walls will be 12 feet tall and have 3/4 plywood on them. The peak at the gable ends will be 16 feet. With 12 foot walls, I will struggle to get some mounts up that high, but with a scaffold and some help, it should be doable.

For me, I want to be able to see them every day. Having them in another building isn't why I have them.

If I was building a new house, I would decide on how big of a room I wanted, and then design the house around it. Windows take up wall space, so fewer windows, more mounts. Same thing with door ways and open areas between rooms.

3/4 plywood is going to hold better then half inch. Cost is more, but I feel worth it for the long term benefit. I plan on going over the plywood with a trowel finish using joint compound, then paint it and glaze it. No sheetrock.

Floors will be tile because I live in the country and dirt is never ending. I also have four big dogs, and nothing cleans easier then tile.

Currently we are working on our back porch. Once that project is done, I need to build a storage area to keep everything that is currently stored where the addition is going to happen. After that is done, I can begin building my room.

That was my issue. I have a man cave in my shop but don't go out there every day. I wanted to see them, so I went the office/trophy room route. As you can see, I'm about out of room though. One or two more up high and I'm done. Then some shuffling will have to begin with some going out to the shop or work office.

I like the detached garage idea, sometimes I like to go to my man cave and be 100% alone, its a converted garage, insulated walls & attic, with a/c, need to add heat, been using space heater in winter, should have bought ac/heat unit.

I have trophies in my house too - my man cave / shop is overflow - I had literally quit booking trips because I had no place to put anymore heads so thus the man cave

I did several houses with the joint compound troweled on for the texture in the past. Finally got a little old. A good tip is to prime the surface with an oil based primer prior to applying the joint compound which is water base. I covered lots of out of date paneling this way. I even did a million dollar house for a dentist over wall paper. I never thought it would stay, because he refused to let me seal it with oil base primer. I asked him a few weeks ago if it had fallen off the wall yet. He said it was still there, despite the fact that the glue on the paper was loose in places during application. why take a chance?

Jack

OOHH!! Can I post a picture of my "Man-cave" I just built? lol.. it is just closed in and I spent a lot of time making the floor look all purdy.. lol

Hope I am not stealing your thunder :P

We finished our new house in December and I added a 985 ft fence (it is 1.91 acres) and we added a 30x30 barn and I am working on a 61'x19' cedar deck on the back.

The barn is really a man-cave.. lol.. and the walls will be framed up and done with cedar fence pickets then stained (we did this at the ranch and was cheap and cool).

ERATH! You and Pitch need to come hang out for a weekend!

Nogalus! I need a dang moose! lol

Check this out:

Oh hell.. I am gonna add the deck too.. lol)








Oh, here is the layout now, front then top minus the barn.. pre-barn) (debating if I have room for a pond.. lol!)

Looks great!

Lol it doesn't matter what else is in there - everybody fixates on the moose.

I guess because they are so dang big.

Well, I wanted to call my ranch cabin "the moose lodge". We have seen sooooo many different exotics, seemed funny. My wife was like, "Moose Lodge?? we don't have any moose!" and I was like, "aaahh.. you just have not seen one yet!".. lol

Can't seem to find any antlers, and not worth spending 1000 bucks on a joke :P

And ignore the septic.. moving the sprinklers to the front :P

R

I did this about ten years ago and quickly regretted it. I though cedar would last a long time, but here in East Texas, where we have a lot of moisture, humidity and red acidic soil, they rotted out in five years. Since then I've changed how I use cedar posts. I drill a 12 inch wide by 36 inch deep hole in the ground and put a 5 foot long piece of C channel in it. Then use a 12 inch sonotube cut to the height I want, and pour concrete. Then I set the cedar log on top of the concrete and drill through the C channel and the log in two place. I'm using 3/4 inch galvanized threaded rod with nuts on either end to hold it in place. So far, I haven't seen any sign of rot.

Really nice place!

Did you use red cedar? The rot resistance is the red part, not the white part. Gotta make sure that you have eastern red cedar with a large amount of heartwood, then seal and treat the outside.

Russ, I'm ready to head south anytime. Text me your schedule for heading south and we'll make it happen.