Hobby Room Remodel – Part 1

by | Dec 11, 2017

I've been a bit busy lately. Working on getting the house ready for a new baby has left me little time for working on my favorite hobby. In fact for quite a while I had no viable space in which to work. My garage was overrun with furniture and boxes of belongings, my former office was being renovated to become the nursery, and my new hobby room was being renovated into a separate room from a previously open den. I had the carpets replaced in each bedroom and all the tile removed from the common areas to make way for new flooring.

Needless to say I didn't make any hobby progress for the last few months. This marks my first year not entering a model into Modelzona (my local IPMS chapter's yearly model show). With Scorpfest in Tucson only a month away, ValleyCon at the Petersen Automotive Museum in March, Best of the West in May, and the 2018 Nationals being hosted right here in Phoenix Arizona; I have some serious building to get done.

But since I don't have any hobby progress to share I thought I'd share my biggest project of all: the remodeling of my hobby room. Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures but the space was initially an open den. It was clear from the layout that it must have been an optional 4th bedroom when first built so I thought I'd make good use of the space and enclose it.

I framed in the hallway wall, closet, and hung the door. My father is an electrician by trade so he came out to help me install the wiring, reroute some of the previous wiring, and set it all up on a new circuit.


I hung all of the drywall myself and my father showed me how to fill the seams. After all the initial inspections were completed I finished hanging the drywall. I didn't feel comfortable trying to match the texture of the rest of the walls so I hired that part out.


View of the room and hallway wall.
Once the texture, trim, and paint were completed I had my final inspection from the city and got the green light.


My next step was to get the carpets installed and start bringing in the furniture. I decided to design the new hobby space in Google SketchUp. The space would be furnished with furniture from Ikea with a few tweaks. I'll cover my custom bookshelves and display cabinet in Part 2.