Making a fun shift from more serious topics like creating an emergency fund, investing, automating, and paying yourself first–today’s post is building a world-class man cave on a budget.
What does this have to do with personal finance and money? Well, personal finance isn’t just about accumulating investments and staying out of debt. There’s also a major component of it where we need to enjoy life, and the people and things around us.
Related:
- How Value-Based Spending Can Change Your Life
- Value-Based Spending: How to Create a Budget Around What You Value
For someone who enjoys having friends and family over for a game, an overflow area of the house, or just a cool spot to watch a game–I introduce to you a man cave, sports room, decked-out-garage, or whatever else you want to call it.
What is a Man Cave?
A man cave is a part of the house reserved for fun, activities, sports, and more. It can be an attached or detached garage, a spare room, an unused part of the house, shed, or anywhere you have space you want to put it. Man caves are a slang term and of course aren’t reserved for just men.
Directly related to the quote on quote “man cave” is the she-shed, rec room, sports room, man-den, among many other names. Any area reserved for fun and activities qualifies.
Why Would Anyone Want to Build a Man Cave?
I’ll start with why I built my man cave. First of all, I call it the “San Francisco Room” as it’s filled with my old 49ers, Giants (the baseball variety, not the football team), and Warriors sports memorabilia.
In my particular case I had just bought a house and had a bunch of old memorabilia in boxes. Being somewhat minimalist, I don’t like having things in boxes or in storage so I wanted to do something with the memorabilia, or just get rid of it.
Rather than get rid of it, I pulled all the old stuff from boxes and decided I was going to use it. That’s what was behind my decision, other people have different reasons such as:
- Want a space for a large television to watch sports or play video games
- Place to put a pool table, air hockey, or ping pong table
- Overflow part of house for when guests are over
- Doubles as a play room for the kids
There are of course many other reasons, and some use the man cave for a combination of those reasons.
Do I Need to be Handy?
Depends on what you mean by “build.” If you’re going to literally build a man cave from the ground up, then you definitely need to be handy (probably a grade above handy).
But if you’re like me and just put together a man cave in the garage (which was an existing structure), you don’t need to be handy at all. The biggest thing I had to do was remove an old workbench from the garage, and I was able to do that in a few hours with a small sledge hammer I borrowed from a friend.
In general, I don’t think you need to be handy at all. Especially if you’re building a man cave in a finished room (dry walled and with flooring). For anything that requires skill, you can always hire out what you can’t do and still keep your budget low.
Building a Man Cave on a Budget: How Long Does It Take?
Again, the answer depends here. If the room isn’t finished and needs dry wall and/or flooring, it’s going to take a little longer. Garage flooring counts as flooring by the way. But if your room is already finished, it shouldn’t take more than a week or two working on and off.
Other factors that impact the amount of time:
- Size of the room
- Whether you decide to paint
- Amount of memorabilia you’re putting up
- Assembly of equipment like a pool table, air hockey, ping-pong table, indoor basketball hoop, etc.
I got started on a weekend and came home during the workweek to finish it up. If I remember right, I finished the majority of it in under a week and a half working just on and off.
Someone who really puts their head down and gets to work though can get it done in probably a few days. In general, I think most people can get it done in a week or two, even if they inconsistently work on it.
Seven Steps to Building a Man Cave on a Budget
Here’s how anyone can start building a man cave on a budget. You don’t need to be an expert or a professional, anyone can do it. Seriously, if I could do it, you can too.
Number 1: Find a Great Place to Build It
The first step to building a man cave on a budget is finding a great place to build it. Fortunately, there are lots of options here. You don’t need a massive garage or basement, lots of other locations work, such as:
- Spare room
- Garage
- Small room in the house
- Home theater
As mentioned above, it can be as easy as a spare room. Or for those who want a bigger space, a two or three car garage is plenty of room to build one. Even a shed in the backyard works. I have a friend who built an amazing man cave using an existing shed in his backyard.
Number 2: Create a Theme
This is a wide category. A theme can be something specific like a sports team, a movie, college, or any other niche area. A theme can also be a combination of things you enjoy.
For example, if you like football, baseball, and a few different movies–combine memorabilia to create one large theme of things you like. Don’t worry if it’s hodgepodge, your passion for what you like will shine through.
Or if you want to create a more specific theme, or just one theme, pick something you like and go with that. For example, fans of a certain NFL team could paint the walls that team color, hang up posters and memorabilia of that team, etc.
I chose the hodgepodge variety. I’m a fan of the San Francisco Giants and 49ers, and Golden State Warriors. So I have memorabilia and items representing all three teams along with some random stuff. The room came together nicely and I simply refer to it as the “San Francisco Room.”
Number 3: Paint It
The next step to building a man cave on a budget is painting it. If you already have a nice painted room with the color you like, you’re in luck and you can skip to the next step. If you don’t, you’ll need to spend some time picking a color for the walls and ceiling, and possibly floor.
This is a good area to DIY if you want to save money. I’m not handy at all, but I can figure out paining and it saved me a good amount of money when I was building my man cave. Anyone can paint, and the good thing is if you mess up, you just need to redo that area.
I personally painted my man cave red and gold, which are San Francisco 49ers colors. To give it some variety I painted the ceilings and floors gold, the walls red, with white doors and trim. I also went in order of top to bottom-painting the ceilings first, walls second, and floor last.
That way if I dripped paint I could just re-paint over it when I did the floors. If you have nice flooring or carpet, you’ll want to cover them.
Number 4: Flooring
Flooring is also an area where you can save some money. If you have an existing garage floor, use that surface and either paint it or keep it as is. Or if you have a spare room in the house with carpet, tile, or laminate, etc. use that existing flooring.
Some people like to go all out on flooring and spend the extra money. That can include laying tile or laminate in the garage. Or even do what one of my friends did and order artificial turf as a surface. He ordered used turf to save some money and add character and it looks great.
Whatever you decide to do, you have options with flooring. You might even want to address flooring last as it’s a good area to cut costs if you’re running over budget. And if you’re not over budget, you can opt for more expensive options.
To summarize, there are lots of options for flooring, including, but not limited to:
- Painting the concrete
- Adding turf
- Installing carpet
- Using a laminate surface
- Keeping the existing surface
Number 5: Furnish It
Now for the really fun part–furnishing it. You have to be careful here as this is one area that can really put you over budget. It’s really easy to get carried away and go thousands over what you originally wanted to spend. It’s also an area you can add piece by piece–you don’t have to do it all at once.
If you’ve got a tight budget, I would also recommend going to garage sales, thrift stores, or looking online at Offer Up or Craigslist for used items. I bought my couch and overstuffed chair for around $100 on Craigslist. Both were in really good condition; the previous owner just didn’t want it anymore.
The secondary market is also great for things like TV’s, a pool table, ping-pong table, foosball, air hockey, etc. Other possible items to add:
- Side table
- Bar and bar area
- Arcade style video games
- Coffee table
- And more
Again, you don’t have to add everything at once. Nothing wrong with starting with the basics like a couch, TV, and a few chairs.
Number 6: Decorate It
Another fun step to building a man cave on a budget: decorating it. This is the cool stuff like:
- Random sports memorabilia
- Posters
- Hanging glassware
- Baseball and football helmets
I also had autographs from my childhood that I added to my man cave to give it some extra character. I don’t really collect autographs anymore, but it’s cool to be display some of the old ones.
This is another area where you can add on as you go. You don’t need to have a fully decorated man cave for it to be cool. Start with what you have and add on if you want. Or just keep it as is and I’m sure it will be good.
Personally, I don’t collect a lot of stuff but I did keep a couple boxes of old sports memorabilia. A lot of what is in my man cave came from those boxes. If you have old stuff, start with that to save some money and also build a high character room.
Number 7: The Extras to Make the Ultimate Man Cave
The last step is also a fun one. It’s all the unexpected extras. When I was in my 20’s I lived in a house with some friends. We had this idea that we were going to build a bar.
Well, I shouldn’t say I would be building it because I can barely hang up a picture, but my friends were really skilled. Long story short, the bar was built in a couple days and we decided to put it in the living room of my house of all places.
When I moved out and bought a place, I decided I was too grown up to put the bar in the living room again so I put it in the garage. That very same bar is not a featured piece of my man cave and looks really good in the space.
It’s the extras like this that make a man cave really cool. The extras are the things that go above and beyond decorating it or furnishing it. It’s the stuff that makes things really unique like my bar or:
- Wall of pennants collected from different football stadiums
- T-shirts of every baseball team pinned to the ceiling
- Seats from an old baseball stadium bolted to the ground
It doesn’t have to be expensive, just creative and fun.
Conclusion
Building a man cave on a budget is achievable for anyone who wants to do it. You don’t need a massive structure in the backyard or a three-car garage. A small guest room, shed, one-car garage, etc. will all do.
The important thing is to have fun and be creative. Put up what you want in your room and think about ways to do it without breaking the bank. It’s also not a race–you can always add and take things away as you go.
So enjoy the process, do it on a budget and make your man cave unique to you!
Have you ever built a man cave? Tell me how you did it in the comments!
