Grotto Racers - dual pits in the Man Cave

After looking at all these pix I decided to try my hand at it. I'm out of town right now, but my wife and kids are sending me pictures and measurements so I can start planning for my return.

My upstairs Man Cave has two grottos on the north wall that have bins in them; the lids open for storage. I thought about a stand-alone cockpit but with all the other desks in there I don't really have room, so I hit on the idea to turn the bins into "cockpits". Thanks to learning about Google Sketchup 8 from this forum the day before yesterday I've started roughing out what I'm calling the "Grotto Racers":

Here is the bin in the northeast corner


The lids open up...


I've been looking for that damned pad


Some measurements from my shore support


Some more


First render with Sketchup


Roughing out some ideas - cut leg holes in the bin, mount the sticks outside, attach a flat-screen to the inside of the lid


Needed more measurements to render the entire north wall - shore support sends a blurry cell pic with the intel


Here's the room as it is now




Here's what it will theoretically look like eventually.




I don't expect it to cost a lot if I stick to the Plan (which I rarely do), so I guess we'll just friggin' see...

That's a rather ingenious idea to mount the screen to the lid. You should try and fit the largest monitor you can there, otherwise you'll end up with too small a screen. Also, you need to come up with a way of connecting the cables so the constant opening/closing (if you plan on doing that) doesn't ruin the cables nor the monitor's connectors.

Good luck with your project!

Yeah make sure your cables are real loose. No need to replace tore cables.

The peripherals will be connected to their respective towers (in the desks) via a service loop made from cable extensions for audio, video and USB. They will coil up out of the way between two of the island desks (there are four of them in an offset diamond in the center of the room) and there will be plenty of slack at the hinge point. In theory they will be tugged to a central location out of the way for connection, and all the wiring inside the bins will be permanent.

I will need to pull electrics from the beer fridge outlet to power the wheels, so there will be an outlet in each bin for that.

The little panel is there for looks; I plan on putting the biggest ones I can safely fit on the lid, but I think even a 28" would work fine, my kids aren't too picky.

I also plan to make the wheel adjustable for tilt, and there's some other stuff in the Plan I need to work on but I'm still muddling through that program so it'll be a learning curve for a little while. I don't plan to make the drawings 100% 1:1 for each and every cockpit component, they are more for helping me to visualize since I will almost certainly alter the Plan as I build.

To get a pass to do this I agreed not to totally freak out with the pits, just get something going that was cool and functional. We'll see how that works out... hahahaha