Having a ball
Post-pandemic home amenities include bowling, skating, golfing and more
When building your own house, the possibilities of what that home can contain are limited only by the imagination, the budget and maybe a few zoning regulations. Celebrities and the uberwealthy have long been known for homes that contain extravagant indoor pools, movie theaters and home gyms that rival many fitness chains.
But some homeowners, who don’t have Jay Z/beyoncé budgets, are embracing the focus on family fun and bringing creative recreational spaces into their homes.
We took a look at a few Middle Tennesseans who embraced the ability to spend time with the entire family and have some serious fun – without leaving the house.
Sciullo skate park
Jared and Jenny Sciullo recently built a home and decided to allow the lower level to function as half home office for Jared and half recreation space for the couple and their kids Madden, 11, and Riley, 14.
Thanks to the slope of their lot, the bottom level of the home would end up with 18-foot ceilings.
“When we turned the house this certain direction on our lot, it dropped 29 feet from the top to the bottom,” Jared Sciullo said. “That was the best thing I ever heard. I always wanted to do something like this, but once I knew how the house was gonna sit I was like ‘game time’.”
Once the Sciullos realized they would have such a large space, the couple pondered a basketball court and other options, but since Jared grew up skateboarding, he mentioned this idea to his son and said after that he wasn’t going to let him forget it.
“As we started thinking about what we wanted, it morphed into this gigantic skate park idea,” Sciullo said.
In addition to the skate ramps, the massive space houses a trampoline and foam pit to catch those launching off of said trampoline.
While Jenny Sciullo added that their kids’ friends love coming over to skate, she enforces some safety precautions including parents signing a waiver.
“I was definitely on board with this, but didn’t want anyone to get hurt so I make sure everybody’s wearing helmets and pads,” she said. “I enforce it.”
Jared Sciullo said both kids use the skate area all the time and even he will take a 10-minute break from work and hit the ramp himself.
“It is such a time commitment to jump in the car and drive 30 minutes just to skate. It’s very convenient to walk downstairs and skate. We’re very efficient here.”
Build-a-bowl
Builder Jay Hayes, owner of John Coleman Hayes Construction, has built quite a few interesting elements inside homes including a bowling alley, secret doors hidden behind bookcases, panic rooms and indoor putting greens.
A few years back, Hayes built baseball player Mookie Betts’ house that he never actually lived in due to being traded to Los Angeles. Betts’ home , Hayes said, included a golf simulator, batting cage, indoor putting green, bowling alley and a safe room.
“Mookie never moved in that house,”
Hayes said. “He moved to LA and sold it to an investor.”
Hayes also built a home in 2010 with a two-lane bowling alley for a family whose son was once a top bowler in the world for his age.
“The family wanted a home with a bowling alley in it, so we found this lot that was great because it was wide and long,” Hayes said. “They lived here for five or six years and he got a full ride to Wichita State, went pro and got rookie of the year.”
After that family sold the home, Hayes ended up buying it and he and his family live and bowl there today.
“Most people don’t bowl a lot, but the kids love it,” he said.
Golf at home
The COVID pandemic forced people to do more things from home than ever before. Working at home. Entertaining at home. Playing at home.
But golfing at home?
Yes. Even golfing at home. Because golf was a pastime that didn’t require close contact, many golf courses became so crowded during the early pandemic that it became difficult to get a tee time. And as demand increased, so did prices.
Alan Looney, president of Brentwood-based Castle Builders, said because so many golfers wanted to get outside, you had to make tee times a week ahead as soon as they opened up at 6 a.m.
This led to more and more serious golfers adding golf simulators to their homes. Looney said he used to see one person every five years who wanted something like this in a new build. Now, he has two to three people a year requesting room in their home for a golf simulator.
“From the ground up we design this space to make it multipurpose,” he said. “We have to make sure you have the right ceiling height (a minimum of 10 feet) and the length of the room needs to be 25 to 30 feet long. We then design in a wet bar or lounging area, and maybe it has an offset that’s a sitting room or gaming area. People are doing some pretty amazing things with these rooms.”
Looney has a simulator in his own home and says he uses it three to four times a week for golf and his kids use it to watch movies.
“I’ll go home in the evenings after work and it helps me unwind a little bit,” Looney said. “I can work on my swing without taking the time to get to the golf course. I go up and work on my swing or work on putting from home.”
He said the Trackman brand of simulators have an 8-foot screen that’s 15 feet wide, which makes for an awesome movie screen as well as allowing you to virtually play most any golf course in the world.
In addition to housing a golf simulator, these rooms can become a theater room, a great place to watch the Super Bowl, the Masters in the case of Looney’s daughters, have a slumber party and watch movies.
Part-ery Barn
Franklin residents Austin and Emily Peckham like their favorite bar, O Be Joyful, in downtown Franklin so much they decided to create their own private version in their back yard.
“We had the idea of creating a shedbar,” Austin Peckham said. “We insulated the whole thing, used shiplap, a brick mosaic tile, we used metal piping for the bar framing and butcher block countertops, added some furniture, built shelves, added a kegerator, wine cooler, TVS and stocked it with our favorite stuff.”
The result is nothing short of fabulous. The shed’s barn doors open up to the patio, which has a fire pit and according to Peckham, “it makes it like a backyard paradise.”
He said while the two of them think the space is fun, the most entertaining part is seeing the faces of their guests when they open the doors to what basically looks like a nice tool shed from the outside.