I Built My DREAM Golf Man Cave in My Garage | Unboxing + Review

I Built My DREAM Golf Man Cave in My Garage | Unboxing + Review

Feel like it’s like every 12-year-old boy’s dream. I like walking around a baseball. I’m kicking a basketball. That’s kind of the point of making these things, isn’t it? So, we closed on a house, but we actually closed on the garage. We had no power in the garage. So, step one was we ran power right from the side of the house, and we dug a 4ft trench by hand going all along here out to the side of the garage. Me and my dad did this by hand. I found out afterwards that there’s actually a custom tool to dig trenches. If you do this, I highly recommend doing that. For the exterior of the garage, it actually had those old school up and down garage doors, but I’m not putting a cart out here. I’m putting a golf simulator in here. So, we put the French doors in out here. And I would say one helpful tip of advice I have is to get doors actually open outwards, not inwards. The space inside comes at a premium, especially when you’re talking about putting a golf simulator in and talking about back swings. By putting this siding on here, it actually matched my house. So, it made some cohesion between the garage and the house, which I love. We took some custom lights on the side. This street sign outside is actually what is surrounds my small town. Don’t know if I’m supposed to have it. All right, enough about the outside. This is what you came to see. Okay, so the first thing that we did out here, it didn’t look like this. And the ceiling above me here ran all the way across. So, this is about 7 and 1/2 ft high. It’s not quite high enough for me to take a golf swing and use a simulator. So, I worked with a full swing team and I measured the exact size of the screen I was getting. And from that point on, I decided, okay, this part of the garage is going to become my storage. This part is all simulator. So, what we did on this side was we eliminated all of the upstairs storage. We installed some beams across the top just to make sure everything was secure and that way there were no issues from a height standpoint to be able to take a golf swing. So, once we had the space set the way I wanted to, I needed to do something on the walls. So, I wanted to go something a little bit more like barnwood. Great in theory, looks awesome, super expensive. Didn’t know that till I started this project. I came across this. It is called T111 paneling. It’s a little bit more than a dollar a square foot. This comes in 8ft paneling and I hung this up all around the perimeter of the garage. I slapped some stain on it. It’s very durable. If something were to happen to it at that price tag, I don’t care nearly as much as if I would if it was $25 a square foot or $40 a square foot. And then to complement the walls and the paneling I have for the box and area where I have storage, this is particle boarding and it was something I just saw in the store. I saw a sample that was spray painted. Like when you slap some paint on it, like I love the design. It looks really cool. It adds a feature. It adds a really cool texture to complement the the boarding I have on the rest of the walls. As I started decorating the garage, I’ve accumulated so many different things throughout my golfing life. And one thing that I kept finding in all my old golf bags was old scorecards. And I saw something on a Facebook group about how someone was getting really creative and how he was decorating with them. And I thought that was a great idea. So, I kind of stole it from him. So, across my ceiling here, I have stapled gunned all my extra scorecards I’ve had from noteworthy courses I played at. All right. So, my first love is not golf. It is the New York Mets. So, on the walls here, I have some of my greatest moments. I involved the New York Mets. And these seats are probably the highlight of them. It was actually a college graduation gift from my parents. These are two seats from Sha Stadium. It’s a great spot to chill out, grab a seat, and it’s just far enough away where someone is using the simulator. It’s a pretty safe spot to take it in. And it’s actually quite comfortable. It’s more comfortable than it was at Chase Stadium. So, these are just some of my favorite momentos. And outside of golf magazine, no one does a cover better than the post. That’s one of my favorites. If you ever see the outside of Sha Stadium, they were very famous for having these neon signs. So, this is actually my dad, my mom, me, and my sister. I tracked down the artist who specializes in doing the Shay Stadium neon signs. And and actually was able to recreate us into a very cool variation of the Shay Stadium neon signs. You know, everyone always wants to have those cool pencils kind of saved in those shadow boxes. I actually found the pencil holders themselves. You can find these online. They’re just a few bucks. Do it yourself. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned by doing this. Buying things pre-made. It might save you a little bit of time, but you definitely pay a premium for it if you do it yourself. Put a little bit of homework into the research. You can do things a lot more creative and a lot more cost effective. So, I originally had no intention on putting a couch out here. This couch was actually purchased for the basement of my house. Didn’t fit. Should have measured it. I should have learned my lesson, especially if they’re doing something like this that required some measuring. But as a default plan B, it ended up in the garage. And I’m very happy it’s out here between the couch and the simulator. I actually did the math. So this exact spot, this little opening here is actually the exact distance to a dart board. I’d love to plan that. It was actually a happy coincidence. It was only off by a few inches. I adjusted it afterwards, but it worked out perfect for this setup to add an artboard out here for the storage component. So, it’s a pull down staircase. Comes right down. So, it is still a garage. We do indeed have tools out here. I know how to use some of them. Uh, one thing I recommend when you’re doing a home is if you have something in the house that’s worth saving, save it. The cabinets I used here and over there are actually from the original kitchen in the house. When I redid the kitchen inside, the cabinets were in good shape. I felt guilty throwing them out. I wanted to repurpose them. So, we have a nice setup for all of our tools, extra stuff, golf stuff, plates, you name it, whatever it may be. It just made for a really nice corner by repurposing something that I already had in my possession. I didn’t have to buy something new. I just kind of cleaned it up, put some fresh knobs on it, and that was it. And same for the fridge. This fridge was in the basement of the house when I bought it here. It was a perfect garage fridge, and who doesn’t like a good garage fridge? my stockpile of koozies became like so high where I didn’t do with them anymore. I was trying to find a fun way to hang them up. So, what I did was I put some ihooks on the top and bottom and I took some string and just used a little bit of clothes hangers. So, what at first was just kind of an awkward little gapping of a space between my fridge and simulator now became like a really fun decorated piece of these koozies that kind of bring back memories every time I look at it. And when it’s hot out, I just grab one. In order to use this space year round, how I knew I want to because I’m going to spend a lot of time in the winter out here, I need to put some sort of heating system in. So, I went with Mr. Coollet. These mini splits I love because they’re so quiet. They don’t make that much noise at all. And for a space like this that’s only 20x 20, it heats up and cools down in no time. Yeah. The thing about a garage fridge is that just it can’t be empty. So, whether it’s stocking it for yourself, and I’ve quickly learned to stock for your neighbors. So, I kind of have something stocked for all the regulars, especially myself on that bottom row. So, when it got to the point of actually moving into the garage, I had a nice collection of golf bags, as you can see. But the one problem was they kept falling over. I put some ihooks on the wall. I used some bungee cords and strap them right on the handle. And now everything is in nice and tight. They don’t move. And they kind of have a perfect place now for a whole line of golf bags to stand up perfectly. This is one of the upper cabinets from the old kitchen. Just like the koozies over there. I’m a big collector of stickers when I go somewhere. gave that a little bit of decor and gave me a place to do kind of a storage dump, I’ll call it. And the rider cup didn’t go very well for us, but I do love this jacket. It’s a beautiful jacket from Ralph Lauren. I wanted to put it somewhere and it makes for a really cool decor conversation piece. It’s probably the thing I get asked about most when someone first walks in here. So, when we are on the road for golf.com and Golf Magazine, we’re giving credentials. It’s just a place to kind of look back and reflect on some of the places we’ve been. I knew when I was setting the simulator up that I needed to put a laptop somewhere. These shelves again go back to my kitchen. While I didn’t save the corner cabinet these came in, I took the corner inserts out of them and mounted them on the wall here and just painted them the same color as the storage space there. Up top, the gnomes. I’m not a big gnome guy, but after all the talk about it, I feel like I had to get one. This is probably the most cherished piece in the whole garage right now. This was actually my grandfather’s uh when I was young in his garage. He had this on his driver. You could tell by the size that drivers were a hell of a lot smaller back then. I think it probably fits a hybrid these days. Uh but when he passed away, there was only one thing I wanted from his house, and it was this. And I’m very fortunate that uh I’m in possession of it. So, he’s got a nice front row view of the simulator right here. So, I can’t just honor grandpa, not grandma. So, this is a a bowling trophy. You might notice it’s a a horse’s ass because she came in last place. The fact that she saved it, I just thought was hilarious. So, it sits right here. Probably the best trophy I’ve ever seen. Up top, we have a shots ski. We actually bought this for my wedding. This was used by the entire party. So, it’s kind of fun to look back on it and remember everyone using it on that day. So, one of my favorite things about the paneling as well. My contractor thought of this. I can’t take credit for it. He actually was able to cut molding out of the extra pieces and it gave it this really fun look. And then, credit to my dad. I have to give him some credit even though he deserves a lot of credit. We were out here and he was trying to find a spot to put a drink down. So, we took the extra pieces again and we built a little shelf which was the perfect size. Plop your drink down while you’re using the simulator. You might recognize the look and feel of these. It actually is the same name tag you will see the caddies wear at Augusta National. So, when it came to artwork, I just love this map that shows kind of like all the golf courses across Long Island. This is probably my favorite piece of art. You know, my hometown golf course is Beth Page and all five of those courses mean a lot to me. My buddy Anthony who runs Good Boy Originals came up with this fun piece of artwork to kind of display this kind of our version of Long Island’s Rainbow is the black, red, yellow, green, and blue course at Beth Page. So, I love that piece a lot. Some of the other artwork you’ll see that I hang up is actually inspired from a a visit I made to the bridge out on the east end of Long Island. I love that place. It’s kind of like a modern-day golf art gallery. I was very inspired by that and it kind of lent to how I envisioned kind of decorating my space out here. This is my favorite golf cover not seen in Golf magazine. I just love the idea. It’s a random morning. Everyone’s getting ready to go to work. On the other side of the tracks, you have someone going to a golf course. Everyone’s staring up in admiration who hasn’t been there as a golfer. So, for the flooring under this is a concrete slab. So, I don’t really want to put turf directly on the concrete slab. So, what I did is I went on Amazon and bought those very generic kind of interlocking rubber mats you see for exercise rooms and playrooms for kids. and it’s a great buffer foundation to have right beneath my turf floor. Now, when it came to turfing this whole floor, uh I knew I was going to have a platform here from Full Swing that I could in theory put on top of anything. So, I don’t want you to think you need to have a turf floor to set this up cuz you don’t. But for the sake of my space, like I kind of wanted to have this cohesive green kind of turf looking floor throughout the entire space. So, I worked with the Full Swing team and they threw out there to me this company called Grass. Uh they make a great product. This is called Money Putt is the floor I have and it was super super easy to put down. And because I have this awesome Grass Tech Money putt floor, my entire garage is one of the putting courses I want. Brakes tell my garage floor is not level. Full Swing kind of got on the national radar from TGL. I first became aware of them years before that. You know, we used to do the long drive competition at the American Century Classic, the celebrity event, and the full swing guys used to be there. They were the official launch monitors of actually gauging how far guys were hitting the ball. Something that jumped out at me the first time I ever saw it was how easy it was to use. I’m not the most techsavvy person when it comes to the gear products especially. Uh, and I’m also not a numbers and data guy. And I was like, huh, you know, that’s something I can understand to use on a daily basis. And it’s it’s very small. It’s very compact. It worked inside and outside. And that always impressed me. At the PGA show in Orlando, I got to see the kit set up for the first time ever. Now, seeing this and discussing with the team exactly what my space was, what impressed me about them was that they were able to customize it to any size space I had. So, you can see exactly how my screen fits exactly this space. A simulator is a very daunting task when you see price tags. There’s no way around that. These things are not cheap. The fact that it can be customized exactly how I want it for a price tag that’s exactly what I wanted at a performance level that I wanted is hard to come by. So, after you customize and you know exactly what you’re getting from Full Swing, it comes nicely packaged on a pallet. This thing came in so nicely protected cuz this is expensive gear. I don’t want something going wrong with it. came delivered for professionally, dropped off in my driveway, which I greatly appreciated because I was a little nervous how this was going to come in. Now, the one thing that I thought was interesting, and this is why I think that the full swing kit can work for anyone situation, is right here in front of the platform. So, this guy is actually where my projector is. Now, while I am capable of having one straight above my head if I really wanted to, this one I love because of the ease of setup. I simply plug it in, I place it somewhere near the front, I play with the remote control, and I start centering the screen exactly where I want it. This makes the installation so much easier compared to so many other simulators on the market. So, the platform, I have it set up to be one step above. I I could have certainly cut this out and dug this into my floor. I like the fact that it is different from the rest of my floor landscape. You know, it feels like I’m taking center stage like at a TGL match. Like that’s what I feel like when I walk in the garage, I’m on my turf and I step up and I’m like, “Oh man, this is kind of a cool feeling. I’m up at bat right now. I’m in the I’m in the batter box ready to go.” So, when you’re setting up the screen, the instructions are super easy to follow. This the whole took I don’t know, maybe an hour or two to set up at most. I didn’t really go into building my simulator thinking I’ll put my golf shoes here, but it just so happened that they fit perfectly around the perimeter here. So, as of right now, uh I don’t have any space, so I can’t get more golf shoes. So, if I want to replace a pair, it means I’m getting rid of a pair, which is actually a good system to have. One of the surprisingly easy parts of this process is setting up the laptop, your launch monitor, your projector, and your cell phone all together. It’s so easy, it’s kind of alarming. One of the biggest perks of TGL software is their core selections. Because they are PJ Tour partner, you get to play with the pros play. Like, I’m about to hop on to TPC Sawrass. I’m gonna play hole 17 over and over and over again. something that I can’t do if I’m there, but because I’m here in a simulator using the software, I get as many balls as I want in the water and nobody cares to judge me right now. My favorite full swing feature is the practice one. The practice facility is exactly why I have this in. I’m here to bang balls against the wall all winter long and get better. Now, here I can actually study some data. There’s 16 points of data on here. While I’m still finding the ones that are right for me, and there’s numbers that are right for every golfer, if you’re a golf nerd, there is endless amount of data for you to sort through. So you can see here it’s got all the numbers on the bottom. You could ask for the apex, the backspin, the sid spin, the launch, the carry, total, you name it. It’s got every piece of data you could think of. Whatever club you’re hitting, there’s a drop down menu. Choose the club you’re hitting. So that way you can document your practice sessions as well. You’re not just like mindlessly hitting a golf ball like you might be at a driving range. You’re actually having like a very detailed practice session that’s going to save your data, study your data, see your trends, see your improvement. And I think that’s one of the biggest perks of having these home simulators and using Full Swings accurate data indoors and saved to your laptop and on your phone. So that way when you’re on the go, you have it everywhere. You don’t need to have this side of it. For the sake of argument, if I was in the garage and I didn’t put a screen up and I just wanted to put a net, if I had the laptop, the laptop will display everything you need. When I was designing the garage, the reason I put the French doors to open up outward was for this exact reason. If they were to open inside and I was swinging the golf club, like the doors might get in the way a little bit. By having it more open up outward, it actually makes like a really cool like indooroutdoor like feeling and vibe, you know, rather than going to a very crowded local outdoor driving range. At least now I get kind of the feeling of being outside hitting balls. And if I really want to go somewhere else and hit balls, I really want to be outside altogether. Like you really don’t need anything other than the kit screen, which is probably the biggest perk of having that kind of launch monitor. And look, when you get your full swing, it’s in this nice briefcase. You can see how well protected this is. All the padding, it’s sleek, it’s light, it’s really everything you need in a matter of like 3 lb. So, when it comes to launch monitors and home simulators, like there are no shortage of options right now available in this space. The full swing launch monitor is $5,000. The kit buildout that you see here today starts at 11,500. Now, while that number might sound like a large number, it’s a very, very fair number in the competitive landscape right now. And again, that comes with the launch monitor, the laptop, the hitting platform, my projector, and the projector protection, the screen, the entire buildout. When you take in consideration all of that and the fact that I have it customized for my space, talking to the full swing team, their assistance along the way, the practice, the data, everything that comes with it, that is a very, very fair figure for what I would consider a very easy setup for a do-it-yourself project such as mine for home simulator, especially if you explore the other options in the market right now. Like this is a really tough one to beat. I think the biggest piece of advice when you’re doing these kind of things is to just make it your own. There is no oneizefits-all simulator. There is no oneizefits-all like decor. Like find what you like. Like be creative about it. The point of these is to feel like a kid again. Like to never grow up. And when you when you do things like this like and I walk in here like I feel like I’m 12 years old again. All I can think about is my mother yelling at me here when I’m taking like a ball and just kind of bouncing it off the walls or baseball bouncing. It’s again it’s like this like ageless never never let place now.

Have you ever wanted to build your own backyard golf simulator but don’t know where to start? You’re in luck! Welcome to the step-by-step walkthrough of how GOLF’s Tim Reilly, built his dream home backyard golf simulator! This video outlines the exact blueprint for what it takes to turn a backyard garage into a fully functional golf simulator.

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