Monday, May 9, 2016

Indoor Basketball Hoop




Hey Guys,

I know it’s been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that, but you really haven’t been missing anything except maybe the fact that we’ve quit full-time RVing. I know, we said we’d NEVER do that and for the life of us we couldn’t imagine why we ever would.
But we’ve both found we just need our own office space and some things are more important than partying around the country...So, we very recently purchased a cute little house in Florida near  Pensacola Beach where we’ve been hanging out the last few winters.
We’d planned to install a pool in the backyard, but those plans are temporarily on hold.  I was thinking about a way to squeeze more exercise into my life without having to take a lot of time out of my schedule to do it. I’d previously told Trevor if we ever did buy a house again I’d love to get a place where we could install an indoor basketball hoop. Then it occurred to me…we have 10 foot ceilings in this house and a dining room we’re not using…And you know I’ve never been too conventional in my decorating. So taking inspiration from Joanna Gaines on an episode of HGTV’s Fixer Upper and on a pin I saw on Pinterest, we came up this plan for our new house!
It’s been so great! When I have something on the stove I don’t want to get too far away from or when I throw something in the dryer I want to take out after 20 minutes, if I want to work off some steam or if I’m just plain bored, I can pick up a ball and  shoot some hoops. It’s awesome!
The wall needed to be painted anyway and we were too lazy to do that, so we just built this over it…just kidding. The wall did need to be painted, but we’ll do that later when we take this down. It’ll be easy. Trevor just screwed some 1x4’s into the studs, stained some wood, and screwed that wood into the 1x4’s. So if we ever take it down, it’s only a matter of patching up a few holes and painting the wall. While we pondered how in the world we were going to locate the studs in this wall, the idea came to me to use a magnet we use in the RV. It came with the childproofing we used for keeping our cabinets shut while traveling. Worked great!

The image he painted on the wall is part of an iconic sign in Gulf Breeze, FL that has pointed the way to Pensacola Beach for many years.
Trevor used a tiny copy of the image with an Artograph EZ Tracer Projector and traced it on the wood with a stick of white chalk. We hated having to buy a projector and almost didn’t buy this one because many of the reviews said the image didn’t show up well on the wall. The projector calls for a 23 watt compact fluorescent bulb that is not included. After a blinding  experience with LED’s we tried to install in our bathroom, Trevor decided to use a 60 watt equivalent LED in the projector instead. It worked great! The image showed up nice and bright and clear!
 The painting only took a couple of evenings and 3 coats of craft acrylic paints. I’m sure there’s something out there that would have covered much better, but we were just winging it. The original plan was to scuff the paint up to make it appear to be weathered and worn, but Trevor doesn’t want to mess up all the work he’s put into it. Hopefully, like my son suggested, it will achieve the look I wanted with repeated strikes from the ball against it.
The basketball rim was sprayed with some gray primer to make it blend in better with the sign. Hanging up at about 8 feet, it’s certainly not regulation, but it’s just for exercise. No one’s planning to try out for any teams in the near future.
We have a playground ball we use sometimes but most of the time we use a child’s bouncy ball purchased from Walmart. The bouncy ball tends to bounce off the rim a lot more than the playground ball, which makes me work harder to reach a predetermined number of baskets before getting back to the daily routine. Not to mention that it’s easier on the Pergo floors and the nearby window.

We bought some old shutters we plan to hinge together to use as a screen to protect the window when we want to use the playground ball and we replaced the chandelier with a caged light on the ceiling.
The ball has only hit the ceiling once while I was shooting hoops and that was when Trevor tried to block my shot. He’s nailed it a few more times than that, but it’s a popcorn ceiling. What’s the worst that could happen? Oh no, we might have to replace it (sarcasm intended)!
There is a plan for a functioning dining room as well. I can’t wait to show you the outcome when it’s completed!