Creating an Indoor Soccer Arena

What do you do when it’s too hot to play outside, and you have a kid with massive dedication for soccer? You get creative.

Here in the Phoenix area, where summer temperatures hit 118°F (48°C), outdoor activities quickly turn from fun to unbearable.

However, as Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, once said, "every problem offers an opportunity for a solution."

Every Next Level (his soccer club) soccer coach tells their players to get extra touches on the ball away from practice. If we could not comfortably go to the soccer pitch every day when not at practice, why not bring the soccer field to us?

That’s how our at-home indoor soccer arena came to life, which I documented on Living Spec with the help of the drawing tool and other features.

It's a DIY renovation project where I turned our family room into a soccer zone for my son, Otto. Yes, we seriously considered rolling out some artificial turf in the front room… while trying to keep this within a sensible budget!

Ready to Work

Using Living Spec's Drawing Tool to Plan

We took measurements of our family room and sketched out a basic layout using the Drawing Tool on Living Spec. This allowed us to get a clear picture of how much space we had, where to place goals, how much turf to order, and how to make it work. This helped me refine the design and make decisions based on real constraints. There's still some work to be done to make it as safe as possible for Otto and others to play soccer, and also to keep the windows and walls safe from the players and stray balls, but we'll update the documentation as we complete our work. This involves clever ways to tighten the nets, prevent any sharp objects from being exposed, and making it easy to enter and exit the arena.

Drawing Tool in Action

Making Practical Progress

We tackled the project bit by bit. One of our big wins was building a DIY divider wall. The retail versions were expensive—up to $2,000—but we built ours for under $200. It’s this kind of hands-on approach that’s kept our project on track and on budget.

We had a bit of luck as our friends from Aerial Ovation and Arizona Performance Institute donated spare foam, saving us a lot of money and making the project more sustainable.

If you’re looking to see how we did it, the full documentation is available on Living Spec.

Work in Progress

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