Potential Move To Dallas Texas

[Family Lines System]

Greetings All,

Found out this week that a move to the Dallas area may be in my future within the next couple of years.

Having lived in Phoenix for 10+ years and not having a basement, I was happy to get back to the east coast 5 years ago. 

It appears that the Dallas area is much like Phoenix in that just about everything is slab construction.      

What do you DFW area modelers do for space?   Ideally all I'm looking for is an unobstructed 30 foot long piece of wall for a shelf layout. 

Do any of these "game rooms" I see listed with homes in the area come with a loft area that large? 

Thanks!

Mike C.

[Kisatchie]

I'd like to move to Dallas to be near my daughter and her family. I'll have to sell the 3.1 books I've written so far for that to happen. I recently started contacting literary agents, so maybe some time by spring/summer I'll have one.


Hmm... I'll wait for the
movies to come out...

[wcfn100]

Those second floor great rooms can be legit layout spaces.  It may depend if there's an office or spare bedroom cut into it.

Jason

[Denver Road Doug]

The game rooms (aka "bonus rooms") can be quite large.   30ft of consecutive wall space might be a challenge, but it does exist.   Of course money fixes everything.   Often people will enclose a garage and covert the space so that's an option too.

Anyway, if you guys are ever in the area let me know...plenty of good model railroading and railfanning around D/FW.   

[Hyperion]

I custom-built last year when moving back to the DFW area.  A single wall longer than 20ft will be virtually impossible to find unless you're talking some really, really nice real estate.  I've got a room with a 24' wall, and even my very upscale builder and architect commented that was one of the exceedingly few times they'd seen a room that large.  No, it's not my train room.

Your best bet will be some sort of upstairs game room space, for sure.  They're quite often windowless or have minimal windows because they're normally centrally-located within the structure.  And they tend to have at least one wall in the 15-20' range.  Downside is that they, almost by definition, do not have a wall on one side at all.

[Flagler]

I have a 50ft long wall in Atlanta,We plan to move to Fl and my space will only be 28 x 22.

[zephyr9900]

My wife and I moved to north DFW 2.5 years ago, and we didn't see any houses with a very long room.  I consider myself fortunate to have a 12x15 room for the upcoming Schuyler Sub, a former den on the corner of the first floor, and all I've had to do is rehang a set of French doors to open out from the room rather than into it.  If I were to try to put a layout in the garage I'd want really good weatherstripping around the garage doors, and insulated doors to boot.  Even working in the garage in the summer is a bear.

Randy

[Rossford Yard]

Have had four layouts in DFW.

Garage 4 x 16 on one half.

Game Room Upstairs, 12 x17 layout, but most comfortable layout room ever with built in bar, restroom etc.

Moved that 12 x 17 to a smaller house, put it in garage, expanded slightly.  Tough in summer, even with a 9K BTU AC unit.  Two year ago, the constant 100 degree started warping stuff to unreliable status.

Started new this year in a closed in room that the builder could have made either a garage or game room a 10 x 20.  Also very nice to be on the first floor and not need to go upstairs.

Over the years, I looked at several homes and builders, and to get the dream layout room you need to be very lucky, or build from scratch.  There are several builders who offer a game room all upstairs on basically a one story floor plan.  The best we found was from Antares builders, as some have angled roofs, cut outs, etc.  This one, from memory was 22 x 28 or so and all useable.

Toll Brothers has a few subdivisions with basements, and I looked at those.  However, after they ran the math, even they concluded that getting a large extra space was cheaper if adding a big room over the garage.

Several modelers here have custom built (or added) rooms above a three car garage (or 4) and come up with 24 x 40 rooms or so.  I have also see a few houses with similar arrangements at 20 x 30 or so over a three car garage.

Like DRD says, money fixes it.  The new house will probably cost about $20-30K over a similar used one, and the room over the garage will add similar cost. But, say, $45K over the life of a house loan, is probably $200 a month at current rates, perhaps well worth it for a dream layout, if you have the money.  Good news is, most areas of DFW are pretty cheap housing compared to most (but probably not PHX).

BTW, if you do the over the garage room, or any upstairs room, upsize the AC.  When you get RR lighting (even flourescent) and ten guys in a big room, the standard sized AC units just don't seem to keep up.

[PAL_Houston]

The game rooms (aka "bonus rooms") can be quite large.  .... Of course money fixes everything.   ...

So true!!

We have gone thru phases of looking for different houses around here, and once we were SO close to buying a different place with a huge game room over the garage that would've been absolutely the best train room ever. 

But, you need to have your priorities in order.  Personally, the space available for a train room was always a ways down the list for me, compared to some other features we wanted in a home, including the location, community and school system, commute time, the overall size and configuration of the house, etc. etc.   And that house with the perfect train room had the front door facing uphill to the street, and would've required major landscaping to cure its drainage problems....the trade-off just wasn't there for us.