I'm building a 26x30 trophy room, and was wondering if anyone has tips or ideas to share. Someone recommended I sheet the walls with 1/2inch plywood under the sheetrock, to make hanging heads easier without having to find studs...

Any other ideas anyone incorporated into their trophy rooms, or wish they would have?

dave

Here's the advice my dad gave me after he built his room - double the size and/or lose the windows.

He added a nice large room and compromised with my mother by adding a fireplace and some huge picture windows so they could look out and watch the animals in the winter - all well and good. Except those windows reduced the space for hanging mounts and the light shining in will eventually fade any mounts in front of the windows.

You should also figure out what besides the mounts will be in the room. For example, furniture, pictures, bronzes, etc. take up space too. If you have alot of furntiture for example, it may limit the space for life size mounts. Conversely, if you have lots of large framed art (my problem), each one takes up a space a mount could hang.

As to the materials, concur with the plywood comment, though any big stuff (moose, eland, buffalo) should still be on a stud.

Good luck, don't forget to post pics once you have completed.

Hello;
The plywood is probbly a good idea, you won't have to look for a stud everytime and holes in drywall are easy to repair, if you change your mind. Screws would be better than nails. If you do gotta find a stud, the new electronic stud finders can't be beat. When I designed our present house, I built the front room with 18 ft. ceilings, so I could properly display large heads like Elk and moose. I'm still working on convincing the wife on the moose mount.
Grizz

Sheet the upper 4 feet with plywood the lower with sheet rock then cover it all with sheet rock. No need to go to the expense of sheeting all 8 or 10 feet with plywood when you don;t hang anything that low any way. Another idea is to use log siding on your walls, looks great and is thick enough to hang anything on anywhere. Another idea is take 2x8, what ever length,cut the edges so they are semi rounded, screw them over the unfinished sheet rock, run them horizontally, use sheet rock mud like chinking between them, makes a wall that looks like the Ponderosa house. Stain to your liking.

Hello;
If you follow Kudu's advice. you'll still have to strap the lower 4' to keep the surfaces flush. Use the cheapest plywood you can find, Sheathing or D grade is fine. 1x8 would work as well as 2x8. Stain and finish before chinking.
Grizz

Cool..these are good ideas. Thanks for the suggestions.

I decided on 12' walls....but the ceiling will be vaulted, so there should be a fair amount of room.

No art, no windows...

dave

12 foot walls is abuot the minimum you want to go, otherwise the big stuff gets obtrusive. Because it is a trophy room, you'll want to keep the windows narrow and low to keep sunlight off your mounts. In AK, it gets dark and you don't want to feel like you're in a cave. I put 3 fans, each with 4 bulbs down the center of the ceiling. That gives light and pushes the warm air back down to the floor. Additionally, I put track lights along the ceiling, about halfway between the fan-lights and the ceiling-wall edge. That makes things bright and warm.

Also, it is a long way from the center of the room to a wall, so I put 3 outlets separated by about 6' down the center of the floor. These are the sort with the screw on caps to keep stuff out of the outlets when not in use. They come in real handy and eliminates long extension cords.

I have built in book shelves along the two long walls extending up to about 4'. The shelves are also a good place to put bird mounts.

You'll really enjoy a spacious trophy room, but even they eventually get crowded

Yes, lighting is something I've been pondering. Sounds like you have it figured out. The outlets are a good idea also.

The room will have one door for access, from the house. I was thinking of hanging a vault door on a steel frame there, so when I'm not home I can slam it shut and not worry about what's inside...

dave

For anything from the size of a Mule Deer or Hartebeest on up, I use lag bolts to hang the heads. They're much easier to get into the walls than a screw.

David, Any family in Wyoming?

If you do the plywood upper and sheetrock lower. You could forgo covering the whole deal again with sheetrock and mudd the whole wall.

What would you do with the joint? Just curious as I am going to attempt this project come summer.

I would tape the joint between plywood and sheetrock. This is just like you would do between two pieces of sheet rock.

No family in Wyoming, that I know of...

dave

David,

I went to a Julian and Sons seminar at the SCI convention a couiple of years ago. One of the things that they suggested, besides using ply-wood, was to use a somewhat coarse natural fiber wall covering instead of painting or papering. That way you can later move the mounts and not have to do a bunch of patching of holes. The fiber should cover/mask any holes, as long as they're not too big.

Also get a lighting person in to help with designing and layout of fixtures.

-Steve

My trophy room is made of logs, and I use lag screws to hold the mounts. If I switch some mounts around, the screw holes are nigh invisible. The problems with real logs is that all aren't the same diameter, so I have to do a little "adjusting" sometimes.

figure that eventually you will use the whole wall when i built my many moons ago i paneled the entire thing in 1" thick oak paneling & now i find that i need to hang stuff on top of stuff on top of stuff. eventually the furniture had to go etc. now it's gotten to a point where i can just about walk through through it and there are a couple more safaris at the taxidermists. yeah i know i should add on, but in this case it just ain't possible

How large to go? Of course the bigger the better. I am wondering if the dimensions that I have given to my builder are big enough. We are looking at 25x35 with 12 foot walls and a vaulted ceiling. I could possibly get a few more sq/ft on the space I have.
Maybe if some of you were to share the dimensions of your rooms it would help me decide if this is a reasonable size trophy room.

I had built mine 20x30, with 12' ceilings but that was in about 1980 or so. At the time I was just hunt north america & it seemed like that would be plenty large enuf. Ha Ha then the africa bug hit, It does fill a room quick. Also I grew fond of lifesize, which now means that it is just about possible to walk theough the room. It seems like the proportion is that the neater the mount the more room. Thus is ends up with the 2 main questions. How much hunting are you planning on and how much can you afford. One word of warning - If at all possible keep the climate control close and leave out the windows the UV light is murder on the mounts

Mine is 28x35, with scissor trusses so the ceiling is at 15 feet and few inches at the wall, and a tad over 18' in the center. On the south side, I have 2 smallish (3x5') windows and a larger 5x7 window on the north side. That lets in light, but are small enough to keep the UV off the mounts. On the east end, I have a double glass door and some small windows on either side, and way up top there's a half-moon window.

Rupertbear, Now that it is up and you have mounts, in are you happy with the size of your room.

Yes. It is large enough, with high enough walls to hold lots of heads-n-hides, including the big ones, without seeming crowded. Any bigger, and it would begin to seem like an impersonal ballroom. As it is, part of the total floor space (about a 9x10' section) is an encased bathroom. That is up against the west wall which is the rest of the house, and has a mountain zebra hide on it.

Well we will be breaking ground this spring. It looks like I will stay with the 25x35 unless someone talks me into bigger between now and spring.

Dr.C
There are many outstanding options for a room such as this. I do this kind of work for a living so if you have any questions feel free to e-mail me. They now make a baseboard that has small lights that shine up to accent walls. Other ceiling lighting options are full length mini tracks that use small halogen floods or pin beams. That would allow you to accent light any trophy regardless of position on the wall. If it were mine, I would sheet all of the walls with 1/2 inch cdx, run 8 foot sheets of rock vertically, use cdx or osb for the remaining four feet to the floor and put up beaded board in a classic frame and panel design to include a chair rail. I just did the same thing in a custom home and it was outstanding. Instead of beaded board though they preferred the smooth look of melanine.
Good luck.
Alan

Vault the Ceiling!!!!

This is the most important thing you can do to ensure that your mounts can go near the top of the wall without encroaching on the ceiling. I built my 30'x24' trophy room with 10' walls and a 9/12 vault. On one end, I have a 52-inch fireplace with a heavy wood mantel and a nice Kudu head above the mantel between two zulu shields and crossed spears.

In the other vaulted end, I have my American heads. I have two Whitetails between and elk with room to add more, should I choose.

In the end, a vault doubles the amount of usable wall space you have for your heads.

Carnivore,
That room sounds great. Do you have any photos you can share?

This was a good discussion. Thanks for the ideas.