Jonny Builds: I Built a Secret Arcade in a Gym

Today I'm transforming my weird garage into the hidden room of my dreams. That hidden room lies just beyond a puzzle door. That's not the only secret I have to keep. I'm also surprising my wife Katie with her dream home gym in that garage. The plan is to split my garage in half, build a 90s secret room on one side, Katie's home gym on the other, and then when it's finished, I'll reveal Katie's new home gym and test her to see if she can solve the puzzle door and enter the hidden room. There are so many little steps and things to do in this build, so we're just going to dive right in. Now we have to frame a wall that splits my one car garage into two spaces. Up front is where Katie's gym goes, but the main event is that secret room in the back. Not only is Katie getting her dream home gym, but I'm hiding a big surprise inside the hidden room just for Katie. My reason for wanting to build this 90s TV room comes from my frustration with the loss of physical media. I mean, nowadays everything is streaming and you don't actually own the music, movies, and games that you love. Now to fix this, my team and I went on the hunt for old tech like CRT TVs, retro gaming consoles, and as much 90s nostalgia as we can find. My goal was to cross what it felt like to hang out in a typical 90s TV room with the 90s arcade experience, then turn the whole thing up to 11. Before we could do that, first we have to get this garage all cleared out. I don't think it's too bad. Shouldn't take us all that long. Ew. Yeah, it's going to take a little bit longer than I thought. So the previous homeowners did a full remodel on this house. And when they did that, they tore down the old garage. It used to be straight down this driveway so you could just come through here and park. Okay. Calm down. Oh God. Maybe don't calm down. But when they rebuilt it, it had to be to where it was like four foot off the property line. So that means our garage is now back around a corner. And with how narrow this driveway is, you cannot park back here. And since we couldn't park in the garage, it quickly filled up with junk. I feel like yesterday was a good day. Got the garage all cleared out. But today we actually have to start building out the room, which means we've got to frame out the dividing wall that's going to separate the gym from the hidden room. Also at the same time, the electricians are going to be here adding electrical throughout the garage. So we're all going to be working around each other, which may be a little chaotic. I'm about to connect the bottom plate to the concrete slab with this guy. This is basically a 22 caliber pistol. You just load an 18 gauge nail, put a 22 little cartridge in there, fire in the hole. Damn. Now I love when tools are actually fun to use and I'm not really a big gun guy, but you know, I have enjoyed the occasional discharging of a firearm in a safe and responsible manner. So getting to occasionally shoot nails in the concrete with a gun that you can just buy at Home Depot, it's kind of fun. I should also admit that I was questioning my own ability to build a wall because I have very little experience framing stuff. This is actually the first wall that I've ever built. So we really just tried to take our time here, make sure everything was nice and square. Well at least square-ish. And by the end, we had a wall. Now I am going to need this experience because the next video involves a lot of framing as well. I'm building a tiny Zen office pod in my new warehouse to help me focus better. So if that sounds like a good time, make sure you get subscribed. Back in the nineties, I love going to my buddy Tim's house because he had the coolest house and that memory is what I'm building this whole room around, starting with wood paneling. Honestly, bring back the wood paneling from Tim's living room and let's leave out his shoddy air conditioning. We're also installing a mini split because we're building this in July, which is the hottest part of the summer, in a garage that was not made for this. So I'm going to have to find some sort of solution for my rickety garage door that has to hold back all that summer heat and maybe figure out a way to make it to where it's not so loud. Oh man, it's so good. Who's putting up wood panel these days? They said you're the only person who's bought it in 15 years. How are they supposed to happen? It's getting covered anyways, so just don't tell anybody. All right, so we got that wall all finished. It's looking really good. Now to really put it over the top, I'm doing something a little bit wild with the flooring. These peel and stick laminate tiles, we're going to do it in a checkerboard fashion, which gives me like nineties arcade flooring vibes. Let's get to it. What's left? What else? Trim? By now, Katie knows that I'm turning the garage into some sort of man cave, and she definitely wasn't near as excited about it as I was, but she still doesn't know that I'm secretly building that gym for her. Now I did clue her in that hidden room that I was building was a nineties TV arcade room, and then I sat down with her to discuss some of her memories from the nineties. What is your favorite memory from the nineties? Tight rolling my jeans. Did you have any sort of like favorite games? Oh, I was a Pac-Man girl. Wow. Okay. I do have one more surprise for Katie, but I'm going to make her work for it. There are three levels of door security. One must solve to beat the puzzle door starting with level one. Now the gym build is going to be very simple, very clean. We're going to have plywood walls, a treadmill over here in this corner, a weight rack right here and over in this corner is just the most inconspicuous, simple garage cabinet you've ever seen. One more, you open it up and it just looks like a typical garage cabinet. I did choose that quarter inch birch plywood that I use in the walls, not just because it looks clean, but because I can also get matching three quarter inch birch plywood that I'm going to build a cabinet out of, and then that's going to help it blend in with the rest of the gym and nothing crazy here on construction. I'm just doing this as simple as possible because we're not only contending with the heat. We're also contending with the fact that we just moved shops. We've moved everything out of the old place, dumped it into the new place, and then started this project immediately. I mean, the electrical install won't even be finished for another month, so we don't have access to my bigger power tools like the table saw. So this build is going to be about as DIY as it gets while I'm limited to some of my cordless power tools. It also means pocket holes. As janky as they can seem and less hidden well, they are the quickest way to do this. Not that I'm going to let myself skimp on quality though. I need to figure out the hidden lock mechanism, which is level two of the hazard door. But first I need a door that I can install it on. So I'm going with the most basic way of making a solid door, and that's just gluing two sheets of three quarter inch plywood together. Although I didn't really think about how trying to attach door hinges to ingrained plywood is a big no-no. Those screws are just going to pull right out. So instead, I'm cutting off a two inch strip and then replacing that by gluing on some maple hardwood. While the glue dries, it's a good time to talk about my newest obsession, which if you watch my latest video, you know that I've become obsessed with learning to play D&D. And for that reason, I want a gaming table in this room, something that's just going to clamp on top of this glass coffee table that I found on Facebook marketplace. Something that not only works for D&D, but also for playing cards and for playing board games. And this is the design that I came up with. So far I've decided on some sort of couch along this wall. We're going to do an entertainment center on the opposite wall. The door is going to go right here, but I'm not quite sure what to do with this corner. Tim had the coolest parents that just let us watch all the R-rated movies. And I remember just loving the whole vibe of that living room. Picture the wood paneling up on the walls, a gigantic entertainment center with a big stereo system. I want this room to feel like a version of that. Like my very own man cave, a place where I can go play Mario Kart 64 because it is the best game on the best game console ever. Obviously, comment yours below. Now combine my love for all things Mario with finding this YouTube short. And I had an idea. Not only would this match the pixel art ceiling mosaic that I'm planning, but it would also give me an excuse to start bringing Moose and Millie to the house on the weekends, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. And yes, I know Super Mario Brothers 3 came out in mid 1989, but it was still very much a big part of the 90s. Living through the 90s meant living with leftovers from the 60s, the 70s and the 80s too. One of the biggest challenges on this build was figuring out how to scale some of my ideas into something epic while also being limited in the tools that I could use, which is probably why I leaned on my 3D printers so much for some of the more fun elements of the 90s room. And the first being this Mario vs Bowser final boss sprite from Super Mario Brothers 3. And this whole thing is made from printing exactly 1,107 of these 1.7 inch by 1.7 inch tiles and then gluing all of these together one by one. Now, both the Mario and Bowser mosaics are going to be mounted to the ceiling, but I also tried to come up with a way to include the existing garage light into that mosaic. And I had this crazy idea that maybe I can 3D print my own Super Mario Brothers 3 light fixture where the diffuser is Mario's fireball that he's throwing at Bowser. I turned my focus back to security level 2 of hiding the secret room, the secret lock mechanism, which I still need to build and prototype from scratch. Back when I was a cop, I took a class on drug cartels and how they would traffic drugs along US highways. And often they accomplished that with hidden compartments. They even showed us a seized car from an interdiction arrest where there were several magnet activated hidden compartments. And I think using 90s drug cartel inspired lo-fi tech in this project just sort of feels right. Nothing complicated here. Just the 3D printed housing, an aluminum rod for the latch or for the bolt, and a way to activate it with a precisely placed magnet operated in a precise motion, which is just straight. Now, I'm not going to know for certain if this actually works in the real thing until I'm able to route out a pocket on the door for the lock mechanism, install the lock on the door, hang the door, and then attempt to open it for the first time while that lock slides into the recess in the casing. Now, I know Katie loves Ms. Pac-Man. I mean, we both grew up with memories of playing those sit-down Ms. Pac-Man arcade machines. And I figured if I can find one of these for Katie, maybe she would enjoy the secret room too. But finding an original sit-down Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine is not easy and it's very pricey. But in my research, I did find another way. Now, this arcade cabinet from Arcade1UP isn't an original, but it does kind of look the part and it comes with extra games. And it only costs $600, which is still pretty pricey. But I was counting on Katie being really excited to play, offsetting her knowing how much I spent. But there was a problem. If I can't get Katie away from the house, there was no way I was going to be able to keep her from seeing what we were up to. Katie comes home during the workday all the time and we needed her away from the house when that arcade machine got delivered. So we actually timed this build for this exact time of July because Katie had won a top sales person award at her company. And with that, an all expenses paid trip to Croatia. While we were gone, Jeff worked on the heat issue by installing a vent fan. Perfect. This cotton candy makes my tummy itchy. Now we hope this is going to pull the cool air from the 90s room into the gym room. But something still had to be done about that garage door. We just got to our room and look at this view. Oh my gosh. I have no words. It's awesome. Mrs. Pac-Man arcade machine got delivered today. Parker and I are going to start assembling it and we are not going to play any games. I am feeling really guilty right now because I'm in paradise and the guys are back home in Oklahoma, like working their butts off. Croatia is beautiful, holy moly. And something really happened on that trip. Just being in Croatia with Katie, actually being present, not having stress, not having my phone on me all the time. I had time to slow down and enjoy my life with Katie. Maybe this room isn't just the man cave. A few days later, it was back to the real world trying to get this project finished, which meant it was time to paint the ceiling a dark color. Now this is going to be for those Super Mario mosaics that are going to be mounted to the ceiling and then backlit with LEDs. I wanted that to contrast nicely. Oh my gosh. I'm hoping this is going to make the mosaic stand out as one of the cooler parts of the room. This also meant going back to work in that sweaty garage, trying to mask off all the wood paneling with plastic, all while it's very hot and humid. And then the plastic just wants to stick to every piece of exposed skin on my body, which might be my least favorite sensation of all. I want to stick to your gum to me. So while I'm dealing with that, Jeff got the door hinge pockets routed out, which means it's ready to actually hang. Now I'm so excited to hang the door because I'm really anxious to test out if the hidden lock mechanism, you know, works. But also because I knew that once that door was on and it was functional, this would actually start to feel like the secret room that I'm dreaming of. The cabinet that hides the puzzle door gets installed next. I'm going to connect it to the wall with all of these pocket holes, blocking the falling thing. I can't get the falling thing. If you block it, that's the only thing Parker's here to do. I'm also going to turn my attention to fixing the issue of the heat coming in through the garage door into the gym. I did my research and came across a really interesting product made by a company called Green Hint. These are American made spring loaded replacement hinges for your garage door. And they claim that these don't just fix gaps in a leaky garage door. They also claim that they can help make it more quiet. I did immediately order a set and we're going to find out soon enough. With the room getting closer to actually being functional, I knew I had to start focusing on finding all the stuff that I want to put in the room. The first place we're going to go today is Rink Gallery. This place is awesome. They have aisles and aisles of vintage stuff in here. We are looking for anything that's going to make the game room feel like it's straight out of the 90s. I'd love to find some old mad magazines. That'd be really cool. That is so effing cool. Oh, hello! Well, we're getting that. Okay, let me show you a couple more of our Facebook Marketplace finds. Jeff found this old entertainment center for like 20 bucks. We also found a futon. It'll do. I bought a television from this guy out of the trunk of his car and then I hit the jackpot on retro consoles. Not only did I find a Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart, but she also had a Sega Genesis. Our buddy got one of these and we stayed up all night long playing Sonic. I even found this stereo system with some big old speakers. The retro tech hunt also let me relive some of my not so fond memories from the 90s. Reminds me of the 90s, carrying my tube TV. So if that garage cabinet is going to blend in with its surroundings properly, the door that leads into the secret room needs to look like the back wall of a typical garage cabinet. Now, the shelves Jeff is installing are going to help do that. They're only six inches deep and a 20 inch deep cabinet. But for the door to work, I do have to leave space for a person to be able to step inside. One thing I did forget to mention earlier is that Jeff and Parker got the arcade machine built while we were in Croatia, but they never actually got it installed. So now they're having to do that while Katie is back home working in town. And of course, right as they did, who should pull around the corner at the worst possible time? I want to be able to set any mood in this room that I want. I found this set of RGB LEDs that come with a controller and then I'm just going to install them around the perimeter of the room using an aluminum track that positions the lights down at a 45 degree angle. I also began working on that Super Mario cat wall. Now I have tons of random plywood scraps laying around after the move. I just love it when I think I'm going to have to go to the store to purchase some materials for a project, but then I realized that I have stuff on hand and I don't have to spend any money. I also stuck with very simple construction techniques and it really doesn't get much more simple than plywood butt joints with some wood glue and a couple of brad nails. And then to bring those boxes to life, I'm going to use a combination of 3D printing question blocks and laser cutting brick cutouts to make the whole cat wall. Then the cats can climb on or inside the blocks. And this knockoff Super Mario Brothers Piranha Plant cat tree, the color is definitely off and I wish the head wasn't just a flat platform, but this should work. I did, however, try my hand at building my own scratching post. Happy cat, pet safe, DIY friendly. And it's meant to sort of look like a pipe connecting the two areas of bricks. And I like to imagine this is going to be like the most fun things that the kitties can do. And they're just going to love doing this all the time. To hang the Mario boxes on the wall, we're going to keep it simple with just some French cleats. And after I was so pleased with how good the scratching post turned out, this happened. Cool f***ing beans. Okay, so I'll have to 3D print some collars to shore it up. Thankfully, that's a pretty easy fix. With the cat wall up, this room is really starting to take shape. And I was getting more and more anxious just to see the whole idea come to life. But there's still a couple more things we need to build. Now, Jeff made some eight foot shelves to hang knickknacks on this opposite wall. I thought I would try to make this secret door look a little bit more inconspicuous. My idea was just to stain it a dark walnut and make it a lot darker and more difficult to see inside the cabinet. Now on the inside of the room, we wanted the door to really stand out. So we went with the paint we're calling Nickelodeon orange. I want Katie's gym to be comfortable, which means she shouldn't have to bend over to pick up a dumbbell off the ground. Now Jeff had an idea for a design in mind and he got to work right away building that weight rack. This thing came out awesome. Nice work, Jeff. It's pretty straight. You know the one dude that like kept his arm up for like 40 years or something. And with that, this gym is done. But there is still one more thing keeping this gym from being usable. We have a big problem. I thought having the mini split in there and then that fan over there pulling the air through was going to be enough to kind of cool off this garage. But it is 92 degrees. Now, I think this garage door is a big part of the problem. I ordered this thing online that I found that I think may hopefully solve all our problems. Got this package in from Green Hinge. These are special spring loaded hinges that are made right here in the USA. Check that out. They're spring loaded, which is going to help not only keep the door pushed up against the frame to seal it off, but also pull those panels in together. Now I was blown away with just how sturdy these Green Hinge replacement hinges felt. Hi friends. Make sure you guys like and subscribe. Now we did add some weatherstripping before installing the hinges so the hinges can actually do their job, included paper instructions, but they also have a short YouTube video covering the installation as well. It's crazy how easy this installation is. Hardest part is holding on to the bolt. Man, these are nice. Did you show the difference in thickness? And this is like freaking cold rolled, eighth inch, American made. I appreciate the powder coating too. Just a nice little touch. Yeah, the green. Because they're hinges and they're green. That's how they came up with the name probably. Green Hinge is the sponsor of this video. These hinges are amazing. They're super affordable and the easiest way to upgrade your garage door. We also added some insulation to the door and it is amazing what a difference this made inside the gym. It's going down. And while I was impressed with how sturdy these hinges are, the real test is whether or not they can solve that noise issue. That's crazy. Oh, it's so much more quiet. Wow. Nice. Thanks again to Green Hinge for sponsoring this video. Still have to put together those two ceiling mosaics. And this is the moment I realized I greatly underestimated the amount of time it was going to take to assemble these guys. Although it was strangely satisfying and I really love how beautiful some of these shots that Parker captured of putting these mosaics together are. This was just a fun process. It's me, Mario. That looks awesome. I don't think I made any mistakes. Did I? That's the next one we're doing. Bowser is 33 spaces wide, which means Bowser will not fit on this table. Man, that's cool. Now Mario by himself took me three straight hours, which honestly isn't too bad. But Bowser was his own beast. And assembling Bowser took nine hours spread out over two days. While I'm doing that, Jeff made a plywood backer that not only gave us a good surface to adhere the mosaic to the plywood and then the plywood to the ceiling, but it also gave me a ledge to run the LEDs around. I did run into one issue. I had glued Bowser up in multiple sections over the course of two days and the sections that I glued up on that first day curled as that adhesive dried. So when I went to put it all together, it didn't quite line up perfectly everywhere. So we just hit the plywood with a bit of black spray paint anywhere there was a gap. And honestly, you can barely tell. These things look great, especially with the LEDs. I also had not yet made that diffuser for that 3D printed light fixture I made earlier. And for an added touch, I added some mini sprites around the outside edge, but mostly to cover up how messy my glue up was in the light fixture. I felt like the secret room was missing one last piece, a little hidden bar cabinet. The door of this thing is one of those old school mini boards. And again, I'm just trying to do something super simple, super DIY. So I designed some 3D prints that would allow me to use even more of that scrap three quarter inch plywood that I used on the catwalk. I'm just going to cut this up, screw it all together without any glue. And I think it came out looking great. And that was it. Everything is built. The room is ready and we could start bringing everything inside. That mini split hanging on the wall is kind of an eyesore. In order to make it look more 90s, we just covered it in a bunch of retro stickers. And pretty much everything left is all about aesthetics. I don't want to spoil too much, but we did add some stuff like this little arcade sign, a lava lamp, some movie posters. I think as far as 90s movie posters go, Jurassic Park is the most iconic. We got everything else into the room and this build is done. It looks so good in here and I'm excited to go show Katie her chair. Are you ready? I don't know. Yes. I still have my eyes shut. Oh, Johnny bodybuilds. It's my inspiration. This is wonderful. Yeah. You like it? Thank you. You're welcome. This is awesome. So I've been hiding something from you this whole time I was building this. Obviously, you know, our garage is bigger than this. Yeah. But you have no idea what I did with the other half of the garage, or can you even figure out how to get into the other half of the garage? Where would you start? With the door? Okay. So clearly level one, making that cabinet blend in didn't really work, but then she's got to move on to level two. This looks like a fake can of WD-40. Let me unscrew the bottom. There's the key I need. I'm hunting for the lock. There's got to be something. Oh, it's a literal box of red herrings. That's a red herring. And then there's a smaller pink key and that's to lock up your cell phones in the cell phone jail because this room is a strict no phone zone. Now we move on to level three. Wait, this little key keeps sticking. Is that a magnet? And then you're just searching around trying to find a spot where it goes. Okay. I just got to kind of hold it here. Gently slide it open. But now you're in the secret room. I have to take it apart. That's step one. Okay, perfect. It's a no phone zone. Lock up my phone. This is a no phone zone. Okay, that's real clev. Oh, I hear that! Holy sh... This is for the kitties? Right. Like they can climb and jump. It's a little collection. But this is really incredible. You did not find one of these. Let's go. Seeing Katie's reaction makes me so excited. I mean, this is a place where I really want to spend time, not just with Katie, but with Lily too. What we pulled off. I'm really proud of. I mean, I bet Tim would want to come hang out at my house now, but this is very much not my man Katie. This is my gift to my family. I think we're going to have so many epic family nights in here. I can't wait. I am never moving again. As far as the cats go, they're still getting used to the place. But the minute I can make my own version of that short that I got the cat wall idea from, I'll make sure to post it to all the platforms. So make sure you're following. I am so thankful that I get to share all of this with my family. And I can do that because of all of you. So thanks to everyone who watches, please get subscribed if you haven't already. And here's a couple more videos we think you'll enjoy.