You don’t have to go to the stadium to show off your school spirit.
Basements, offices, screened porches, yards, and yes, even kitchens and bathrooms, can be filled with fandom.
Homeowners can find architects, builders and interior designers willing to team up with them to devote a room to sports memorabilia and to create spaces worthy of watching their favorite teams. Think of it as bringing tailgating to the home.
Ranking your top needs
Is your small or large collection of sports memorabilia something you think worthy of displaying? If so, work with builders or designers to plan out the built-in bookshelves, cabinets and niches needed to show off your love for a team, sport or athlete.
Dale Contant, president of Atlanta Design & Build, said he’s worked with clients who have wanted to display signed posters, jerseys and football helmets, as well as bigger items, such as hockey sticks. Sometimes items are housed in open cases and shelves, or depending on their value, placed behind glass. In addition to determining where and how to house the pieces, he suggests that homeowners consider how to use recessed or light fixtures, or where spot lighting may be needed.
A homeowner in Buckhead gave MOSAIC Group [Architects and Remodelers] designers Rick Goldstein and Stephanie Ives specific information about the sports-related items to be displayed in a bedroom-turned-home office. After careful measuring, a series of custom-made, solid birch cabinets were created to fit the collection of baseballs and jerseys, as well as to house office equipment. The room, about 14-by-18, also features five TVs.
Giving areas game
If you envision watching every one of your favorite team’s games or the big race from the comfort of your home or hosting friends to cheer alongside you, consider the TV setup. For some homeowners, just one TV isn’t enough. For a client in Johns Creek, Contant is creating what he calls the “sports bar effect” with several TVs behind the bar. The homeowners can watch multiple games or sports, or the screens can be combined to make one enormous TV showing one game. Depending on what a homeowner envisions, a technology expert, or a sound or home theater company might be needed to create the right setup.
A home theater with one big screen TV is another option. That decision depends on how the homeowner plans to entertain during a sports event and if a bar is being added to another part of the basement or an upper level of the home. Having a home theater may result in people missing the action on the field if they need to leave the room to refresh drinks or get something to eat at the bar. For some homeowners, the bar or outdoor kitchen is the center of activity when watching sports.
Covered porches and screened rooms also are competing for fans’ attention. Adding a TV under a covered space can make it possible to host a game-viewing party and demonstrating your own skills using a smoker or grill. Accessories for the outdoors can be team-centric, from grill paint and covers, to garden statues, flags and banners flying with logos and mascots.
Showing your true colors
Some homeowners incorporate team colors, logos and mascots into their walls and tile choices in the kitchen, bathroom or bar areas. Others take their school spirit a step further, to the flooring.
CBA Sports, based in Norcross, is customizing its outdoor and indoor sport courts for tennis, basketball and other activities with high school, college and pro team logos, names and colors. Some clients are athletes and former athletes; others are fans.
“Most people are putting the college they went to, or wish they would have went to,” said Jamie Sartin, president of CBA Sports said.
The licensed logos (the company also has done a court with the NBA logo on it) also can be used in exercise rooms and can extend beyond the floor to the walls or ceiling. A small college logo would add a couple hundred dollars to the cost, while a larger logo with multiple colors and more intricate design could venture into $1,000 or more, he said.
“The price to do these has come way down. We used to get an artist in to draw a lot of these logos. Now, with technology, there are stencils and other things that have become very easily and readily available for us,” Sartin said. “The opportunity to do these is much easier and much more cost effective than it used to be.”
He estimates that about half of their clients want some type of team logo, or some choose to display a company or family name. Even when homeowners have different allegiances, they don’t have to choose sides in the design. For one court that CBA Sports created, half of the court had a Clemson logo and colors while the other half was pro-Florida State.
“The court is split down the middle,” he said.
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