Our first room
A two-car garage in Hamburg. Ours.
Before we sold a single room we built one for ourselves, in the garage on Brierwood. Same house, same kids' bikes, same ceiling as everyone else on the street. Here's what it looked like, what we did, and how it plays.
Before
A garage, doing garage things
Golf cart, two bikes, a chest freezer, folding chairs, and a floor that slopes toward the door like every slab in Western New York.
Framing
One new wall, and the bay becomes a room
We framed a partition across the second bay in wood, kept the garage door and opener working on the car side, and ran electrical for the projector, screen wall and heat pump before anything closed up.
Finishes
Drywall, paint, slat wainscot, lighting
Walls closed and painted, a fluted wood wainscot around the room with a built-in cabinet for the PC and launch monitor, and track lighting on the beam. The slab stayed exactly as it was.
After
Screen, green, and a place to sit
Foresight launch monitor, PuttView projected green with nine cups, two displays for the sim and the game, blackout drapes, ductless heat, and an equipment cabinet built into the wainscot. Leather chairs on the carpet where the golf cart used to park.
The putting green is engineered, not guessed
Every break on the green is on a drawing first.
This is the contour plan for our own green: a 3.4 by 4.9 meter surface with six elevation bands, slopes from 1% to 3% laid out so a putt actually breaks the way a real green does, and the cup positions set before the first sheet of foam was cut. The foam underlay is shaped to this plan, then the turf goes over it. You get the same drawing for your room, and it gets framed on the wall.
- Surface
- 3.40 m × 4.87 m (about 11′ × 16′)
- Elevation bands
- 6, from 0.27 m to 0.70 m spacing
- Slopes
- 1.0% to 3.0%
- Cups
- 9 positions