bought a random playfield

Ok, so I have no actual use for this since I don't own this pin, but fer $5 + $15 shipping, I figured how could I go wrong?  It seems to be in decent shape, and I suppose my plan is to touch-up all the wear spots (after a good sanding), and then clearcoat it.  I can then sell it as a "refurbished" playfield for much more, or I thought about possibly turning it into a really cool ceiling light (populate all the holes with bulb holders, wire it all up in parallel, power it up with a 6VDC wallwart).  Heck, maybe I'll just turn it into a coffee table, I don't know.  Point is, one of the things I liked best about my last shop job was turning a crappy mylared playfield into a vibrant good looking pin.  Here's some photos of it from ebay:

gameroom theme

So while some people will simply finish a basement, throw down some tile, paint the walls, and throw some decorations up, I want to do a theme. This isn't unheard of, just takes a little more effort. I know what my theme is going to be without a doubt, I just have to figure out how I want to do it.



Basically I want to loosely base it off a restaurant that used to be at woodfield mall in schaumburg back in 2001 (it closed after a couple years). There was also one in new york, which just closed this year. It was called Mars 2112.



It had a cheesy entrance, you stepped into a "spaceship", a video played that was supposed to be a window looking out like you were actually traveling to Mars.

That cheesiness aside, the decor of the restaurant was really cool. You had red rock walls, making it look like it was carved out of a cave on Mars. There were space scenes airbrushed to simulate a skyline. The waitresses were dressed as aliens, then they had this wacky scientist who's supposedly responsible for designing the restaurant:








There was also one of those laser projection displays shooting messages on the wall.(which I would love to find a reasonably cheap version of)


Now I'm only taking this theme loosely based.  I don't want a "mars" theme, but I like how they implimented it.  I would like to

create a generic planet, something more like the moon. Also, I want lots of NASA embedded into it. Starting with the stairs, I want the ceiling to be a sky. I plan on doing this by taking some thin particle board, cutting a bunch of holes in it, and backlighting it with LED christmas lights (which will run off the bulb socket at the top of the stairs. I also want a rotating sign above the archway, which will tap into the arcade growing up, which is "Galaxy World":





I also want to have lots of that white structure steel that you see