Wisconsin Pinball

I am planning to finish my basement this year and I have a large room planned for a gameroom/brewery. My contractor recommended luxury vinyl tile since it is easy to clean and maintain, but I thought I'd ask what people on here use for their gamerooms. What do you recommend?

I have carpeting. Why? Its warm on the feet. I'm certain other floor coverings hold up better and will last longer. It doesn't matter. I like warm feet!

I have game rooms in my house with carpet, hardwood, and concrete.

There are pros and cons to each, but given the choice I would likely do finished concrete with a nice textured stain and sealer, but I would also have a runner of nice carpet under/ in front of the pins.

Carpet is nice for the padding and warmth under foot. I also like carpet for the right amount of stick/slidability under games.

I would want the concrete for when working on games. Slide the game out of the row so it is over the concrete and then when I drop solder, cleaning crap, etc and just in general make a mess, then it is easy to clean up.

I also like concrete for ability to find small parts that I drop inevitably when working on games.

When you say brewery, what do you mean? The reason I ask is if you are crushing grains in the basement, the dust will get everywhere. The problem with that is that dust is potentially infectious to your fermenting beers. I actually have created some pretty good sours by throwing a handful of raw grain into my wort. Anyways, if that is the case, you wont want carpet because you will never get it out. If you are just fermenting though, its no big deal either way. Personally, I like to be comfy when I play, so carpet of some kind at least in front of the pins is a must (unless you have radiant floor heating).

If you are going to be doing anything with liquid, I wouldn't go carpeting unless you are using area rugs. If you can create two separate physical spaces, then I would suggest carpeting where your games are at as it will be more comfortable and knock down some of the noise. My gameroom is radiant flooring, with a thin carpet padding to allow the heat through, and then full blacklight carpet throughout. It is commercial carpet, and is extremely tight, so it is super easy to find any dropped parts (even easier than bare flooring).


Here is a bad picture of it to give you some idea what it looks like....

Tim's carpet is awesome!

Yeah, tight carpet would be nice for finding fallen parts.

Hilton wrote:Tim's carpet is awesome!

Yeah, tight carpet would be nice for finding fallen parts.

Thanks, only here do people appreciate the carpet, when anyone else comes over and sees it, they look at me like I am the guy that drives the van with "candy" spray painted on the side of it

..... I was actually surprised how much easier it is to find parts on the tight carpet as opposed to bare floor. I think the difference is that the carpet has a flat finish where all the parts have some sort of shine to them. You can find them almost instantly, and if you can't, a quick pass with a flash light makes them super easy to find.

For 9 years, I had concrete floor only, I will say if I was brewing in my basement, I would do what I did with my basement floor before I carpeted it- Roll it with that garage floor coating stuff (you can get sprinkles and stuff in there too, for looks). That stuff is great, and made cleaning up the floor super easy.

I'm actually redoing my basement at the moment, and went with a low-pile carpet from Home Depot, which I really like so far. That said, the prior owners of the house did some pretty serious waterproofing of the basement, and I'd have probably gone with carpet tiles if that weren't the case. By the way, does anybody know someone who does drop ceilings? That's one of the last things I need done.

I had a low pile commercial grade carpet installed. No pad. Glued directly to the concrete floor (basement game room).

I get the comfort of carpet and without the pad, moving games around with my cart is a breeze.

This commercial carpet is really resilient as well. If I move a game that's been in a spot for years, within a week or so the "pin footie" depression is gone.

I went with a laminate in our basement. It's super durable - even without protection my pins haven't made a scratch. Laminate has come a long way, and some of it looks pretty nice. We got ours very cheap, but I'm still happy with the way it turned out. I had considered tile, but I was a little concerned about the cold, and also about an errant pool ball cracking a tile. I also considered staining the cement, but the wife wasn't having it - she wasn't that impressed with the look, and was concerned about the cold.

I'd probably make the same decision but with some higher grade materials.

do pins on the laminate have pin footies or just bare metal levelers on?

I've used the rubber footies, but now I just have them bare against the floor - just the levelers right on the laminate. I slide them around pretty aggressively when I'm just playing around, no damage to speak of.

awesome!

OK, that changes my mind!

I would do that hard as nails laminent then and add area rugs where I want a little extra warmth.

Laminante is great for a bit of warmth, look, cost, ease of install!

I love my bamboo eng hardwood. Wish I would have run a hearing cool under it but it's alright.

Hilton is right. For the price, installation and durability the laminate will do you right.

ESP if there is any chance of water later.

Chris

Thanks for all the responses.

BrewNinja wrote:When you say brewery, what do you mean? The reason I ask is if you are crushing grains in the basement, the dust will get everywhere. The problem with that is that dust is potentially infectious to your fermenting beers. I actually have created some pretty good sours by throwing a handful of raw grain into my wort. Anyways, if that is the case, you wont want carpet because you will never get it out. If you are just fermenting though, its no big deal either way. Personally, I like to be comfy when I play, so carpet of some kind at least in front of the pins is a must (unless you have radiant floor heating).

The room will be roughly 35x16 is size and one side will be a small kitchen with space in the corner for my electric boil kettle and an exhaust hood. Fermentation will be done in the adjacent utility closet, so grain dust shouldn't be an issue. I definitely want something waterproof for the kitchen in case of a boil over or spill on the floor, which I like about the LVT. Now to decide whether to extend it for the whole room or put carpet or something for the rest. My main concern is there is a door out to the patio next to where I want the pins to go and I don't really want carpet directly in front of the door.