Building new trophy room

[JamieD]

My wife and I are planning to build a new house and the focal point of the house will be a gathering room that is also going to be our trophy room. We are looking at something like a 30'x30' room with vaulted ceilings. The west wall will be mostly windows.

Wondering if anyone has any advice/tips after doing their own rooms and if anyone would care to share photos of theirs to give us some ideas. TIA!

 

[TOM]

Pm sent.

 

[Bert the Turtle]

West sun is difficult to control. If the view is to the west and you have no choice, so be it, but a wall of windows to the west is going to lead to a sun washed room that will potentially be damaging in the long run to the trophies.

 

[jaustin]

Hello Jamie,
My game room is 25x25 with vaulted ceilings. My room is already full and I am already spilling over into other areas of the house. I don't mind this but my wife is not crazy about it. My ceiling hieght is 12 feet on the vaulted portion with standard 8 foot walls on the sides. If I had the vaulted portion 14 feet and the side walls 10 it would have given me tons more room. If you plan on big animals like kudu, eland , elk, and red stag, the higher your ceilings the better.

Another thing you need to plan well is lighting. I didn't do a very good job on this myself. My lighting is adaquate but could be much better. If you plan on having full body mounts or mounts with habitat you can never have too much room. I also wish I had more room for art work and curios i have picked up along the way. I will try and take a few pictures and post them here. Have you looked through any of those trophy room books for ideas? Good luck, Jim

 

[JamieD]

I know ideally we would have little to no windows in the room we want to keep the trophies in but we have a great view to the west (which includes some deer that seasonally live here). Our goal is a welcoming, hang-out kind of room that happens to have trophies in it and not the "look at me room" which have been mentioned elsewhere on other threads. We aren't into fancy but if someone looks at something we've done and calls it weird then we're good with that. My wife actually has her heart set on a fake baobab in the adjacent kitchen. We'll see....

We are thinking a 2 story over the adjacent kitchen as a loft, making the sidewalls between 14'-16'. With this in mind we are concerned about how high the vaulted ceiling will get!

 

[jaustin]

Here are a few pictures of my modest game room. I still have a little room left but I have a sheep and a big kudu at the taxidermist now. I also have a mountain lion hunt booked for this winter and a muntjac and roe deer hunt next spring. And Africa is still calling so I will have to answer soon.

 

[enysse]

I would put 3/4 inch plywood or particle board underneath the drywall....if you are doing drywall for walls. The more support the merrier.

Nice room, Jim!

 

[Diamondhitch]

West sun is difficult to control. If the view is to the west and you have no choice, so be it, but a wall of windows to the west is going to lead to a sun washed room that will potentially be damaging in the long run to the trophies.

That was my first thought when you mentioned the wall of windows. UV light is very damaging to animal hair regardless of the direction they face but direct sunlight is the worst.
If you choose to do it this way just be aware that it is not just going to slightly fade the colors, depending on the amount of sunlight it will severely fade as well as make the hair quite brittle and eventually start to split and break turning thousands of dollars of beautiful mounts into ratty looking peices of crap.

 

[Buff-Buster]

JaimeD,
I built mine 25" x 35" and I already wished it was bigger . My walls are 12' with the cathedral roof at 17'. As enysse already mentioned, use 3/4" sheathing behind the sheetrock so you are not limited on where your mounts can go. As jaustin said, focus on lighting. I tried to cut corners here and it was a mistake. You cannot have too much light, especially directional lighting. You can check out my room in my photos to see what you do and don't like. Good luck!

 

[Buff-Buster]

One more thing. I installed double doors (8'-0") to the outside to allow easy access with the large full body mounts. Lifesaver!

 

[Bobpuckett]

JamieD I've got a 25' X 35' room over my garage that was suppose to be devided in to 2 bedrooms and a study the walls were never put in when I bought the place so I made it my Trophy room, and I use directional track lighting so I can point them at the trophies I want highlighted. One suggestion if you are going to make the west wall glass then use tinted glass to protect your trophies as well as everything else from UV rays Just remember with glass in the winter it will help warm the room in the summer it will cook your butt, better to just have a deck to walk out on.

 

[Bobpuckett]

Here are a few pictures of my modest game room. I still have a little room left but I have a sheep and a big kudu at the taxidermist now. I also have a mountain lion hunt booked for this winter and a muntjac and roe deer hunt next spring. And Africa is still calling so I will have to answer soon.

Nice!!!

 

[RickB]

My basement is all I need for now. Hopefully ill need am airplane hanger some day! But as others have said the plywood under the drywall is a real must. You can mount any trophy anywhere. Makes electrical a little harder but it is not really that bad. Next question is how much more hunting do you plan on doing? Not just this year, but 5-10 years from now? My thought is go big now. As big as you can afford. Don't want to run out of room 5 years from now. My .02

 

[Bobpuckett]

JamieD I've added a few photos nothing fancy but it works for me it's as country as I am. and as you can see in the photos if the ceiling isn't high enough or your room isn't big enough you have to star doing pedistal mounts so you can find a place to put them. Don't pay any attention to the exercize equipment I've had it for a while and it doesn't seem to help I'm going to have to get the books out and see if I'm suppose to sit on it or something. :laughing:

 

[Stretch]

jamieD - What about heating and cooling? If your going to install forced air make sure you include some high wall returns to draw the warmer air off the ceiling. Also with forced-air your going to want to consider a high efficiency air cleaner. Newer high efficiency forced air systems feature ECM super efficient blowers that operate on as little as 75 watts of power. This allows you to run the blower continuous (super low speed) for pennies a day. By running the low speed blower continuous you will experience more even temperatures and have air purification 24/7. This will keep the dust from accumulating on your trophies. Alternate to forced air would be in-floor hot water heat. This method is comfortable but does not allow for air purification and you would still need a separate system for cooling.

bobpuckett - What a nice looking trophy room! Good job buddy.

 

[Bobpuckett]

jamieD - What about heating and cooling? If your going to install forced air make sure you include some high wall returns to draw the warmer air off the ceiling. Also with forced-air your going to want to consider a high efficiency air cleaner. Newer high efficiency forced air systems feature ECM super efficient blowers that operate on as little as 75 watts of power. This allows you to run the blower continuous (super low speed) for pennies a day. By running the low speed blower continuous you will experience more even temperatures and have air purification 24/7. This will keep the dust from accumulating on your trophies. Alternate to forced air would be in-floor hot water heat. This method is comfortable but does not allow for air purification and you would still need a separate system for cooling.

bobpuckett - What a nice looking trophy room! Good job buddy.

Thanks Stretch my brother-inlaw who likes to hang out in there as much as I do said he wants a room like that one day I told him it's easy to do just 40+ years of hunting anyone can do it. over half of the Taxidermy work is done by myself had to learn it if I wanted to mount the good ones will be adding the wifes full body mount Black Bear in a few months not doing that one. Bob

 

[jaustin]

Nice room Bob. Love the walls and ceiling.

 

[desertloper]

What is everyone's thoughts on lighting?

Im going with recessed cans with directional trim...but what type of light should a guy use?...or more importantly avoid.

The cabelas here just replaced quite a few mounts that became sun and light bleached.

My trophy room won't see the 14hr days 7days a week..but I want to know if there are lights to avoid.

Thx!

 

[enysse]

I would think recessed cans with directional trim...would be a very logical choice.

 

[Pacontender]

For lighting, we spent the extra money on LED bulbs at our ranch house. A lighting designer is sometimes well worth the money.
For windows, Pella Sun defence wood clad windows and tinting will be a big plus in keeping your trophies and art from fading.