Setting up a mancave on a budget

An electronic version of the sacred mancave, where men can relax, have fun, and even learn a thing or two

09
November

Setting up a mancave on a budget

Written by admin. 2 comments Posted in: General, Mancaves, Money
Tagged with budget mancave, building a mancave, cheap mancave, decorating mancave, Mancave, mancave design, mancave ideas

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The truth is most guys have some issues when it comes to making their Mancave a reality, whether it be a tight budget, not a lot of space, or lack of spousal support there are still ways to make that space available. First, of course, you need to identify that space. Is it a den doubling as a mancave, a finished or unfinished basement, a spare bedroom possibly, maybe the garage, or possibly a family or rec room in the basement.

A key component of any Mancave is having a real poker table with a green felt top, chip holders, cup holder, etc. Now the nice ones look AWESOME but take up a lot of space and are not cheap, easily setting you back $600 – $2000. So if space and/or budget are an issue you can get a very nice fold up poker table for about $150 with the only realy difference being the heavy thick intricate wood of the expensive one for some fold up card table legs with a composite or plastic topped table but it is still functional and works well. To go with this you need REAL poker chips and I recommend getting 500 of the dice striped 11.5g chips in the nice carrying case. They look cool and feel great, like being in a real casino and you can get them online these days for around $37 (I paid $100 several years ago for mine). I have recently seen both of these on sites like overstock.com for the prices listed above.

Now the next must have item is a home theater or as close as you can come to one. Again if space is a problem you will want to look at a flat panel LCD or Plasma type TV but those are not going to meet the tight budget issue, especially if you go for the huge wow screen. I would recommend looking at some front projector reviews for what’s hot now and then looking to see what the previous year’s model or previous couple years models were of the same projector and see if you can get a used one for a lot cheaper. I have the Sanyo PLV-Z3 and really like it. I have it projecting on a 109″ screen which is awesome. It’s not quite as good a picture as my 57′ DLP but the size makes up for that and the picture is very good. I got this one several years ago and they are now on the PLV-Z4, Z5, & Z6. This is a great line of home theater projectors and you could get the Z4 for under $1000 easily now and the Z3 for well under $500 if you can find one for sale but they are becoming more scarce. The point being that you can find a good quality used projector to pitch you a 100″+ screen for less than $1000 if you look around. To go with this you could paint a wall with theater screen paint but if you can swing the extra money I would recommend getting a screen. You can get a motorized one that drops down via remote for about $150-$250 depending on your screen size from Severtson, Da Lite, and others. You might be able to save a few bucks by getting a manual pull down screen as well like they used to have in school classroom. The nice thing about the motorized pull down screens is that they don’t take up a lot of space or create an eye sore that your family may hate when not in use. If you have the space you can always add some flare with curtains that open up, even with an electric remote, to display the screen behind for movies.

You will also need a surround sound system. These have a wide range of cost as well. You can get a decent one though for a couple hundred dollars. In fact you can get a Sony Bravia Home Theater system at Wal-Mart for $179 and it includes a DVD player, 5 speakers, and a sub-woofer which is a must. It’s certainly not top of the line but hey, we are talking about building mancaves on a budget. You can always upgrade down the road so just think of this as your “starter mancave”.

Seating for your mancave can come in many flavors. If you have the space and desire and are centrally focused on the movie viewing aspect of it you may want to built a cheap boxed shaped riser so you can have 2 tiers of seating even. A couple of 2×4’s and some half inch thick plywood and you have a nice second level for seating that is only 6″-8″ higher than the seating in front of it but gives a nice effect for not much money. Of course if you go this route you will probably want theater seating chairs. I have seen them listed on e-bay and other websites for $100 for a group of 4 which are essentially cloth padded chairs from a theater that closed down. You can obviously go way over the top with full on leather la-z-boy reclining theater chairs as well but that’s for the top end. Another option is using a couple of old comfortable sofa’s or buying a couple of inexpensive sofa’s. Some padded folding chairs for your poker playing evenings should also be stored in a closet somewhere if possible.

As far as decorations go I would recommend visiting something like movieposters.com and grabbing a few large authentic movie posters from some of your favorite guy flicks. You can get just about anything including many different versions of the same movie if you have a particular interest and many of them are only $5 each with some around $14 and others $60 and more. I might recommend the Sin City poster with Jessica Alba if you plan to splurge on just one ($60) and go with a few of the cheaper ones like Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and Heat for around $10 each. But whatever your pleasure in movies is you are sure to find some great posters that will take up a lot of space and cover otherwise bare walls in your mancave.

So for approximately $1106 you can outfit your mancave with a 100″ theater complete with projector and motorized screen, 2 rows of 4 theater seats, dvd player and surround sound system with sub-woofer, 4 authentic movie posters for the walls, and an 8 person poker table with real clay poker chips. Obviously you can tweak this to focus on your specific areas of interest or do a little bit at a time but holding off on a mancave because you don’t have 500 square feet and a $20,000 budget to outfit it shouldn’t be a reason to wait now. Good luck!