Another new game in the Shed

Morning all

The Shed is now properly up and running !! There are still some bits to do in the building but it is almost complete.

A few pictures from a recent Dark Ages game...

Titled the Harrowing of the North - three Norman Warlords enter the table to destroy the fields, crops and buildings of the rebellious Saxons. Using Hail Caesar rules with my 28mm collection great fun was had by all.

Beginning to realise that the larger table allows for a great deal more room for manuoever

The Saxons were mostly simply armed Fyrd

Trying to hold back the armoured horse

Stiff resistance was offered and a Saxon victory declared

Up next will be our refight of Salamanca - table set for action

and the troops mass

The Shed - onto the final stretch and the inaugural game

Good Morning All

the previous post can be found HERE

Apologies for the radio silence as things have been rather hectic in the last few days but I now find myself with some spare time (truth be told Mrs Shed and Shed-daughter have gone off to the Canary Islands for a week) and aside from some dog walking and bit of housework I am going to take a break. Since October when we bought the new place I have been working flat out and the batteries need a recharge.

I mentioned dog walking - well The Shed household has a new family member. Gandalf is a Labradoodle puppy of 8 months and we have owned him since he as about 8 weeks old. He's fit in very quickly and even gets on with the cats !!

Gandalf at 10 weeks - 

Gandalf at 8 months - now somewhat bigger at over 30kg

Anyway that is enough of my dog - onto news from the Shed...

The last two weeks has been spent sorting the Shed out - namely finding a home for my vast terrain and figure collection. The fact of the matter is that the new shed was not big enough to store everything and as a result quite a lot has had to be stored in one of the other outbuildings.

The shed was formerly an office and came with a large number of metal cabinets and desks. I kept back some of these from the clearance and they have now been pressed back into service. Three large floor to ceiling cabinets have now been placed along one wall and hold all my figures.

These have been framed in timber and await cupboard doors. The section to the left were two old cabinets with drawer runners installed. I cut these down to fit my Khartoum and Peninsular War terrain.

They only just fit !

The cupboard doors have now been cut and once painted the same green used for the kitchen should be hung in the next month.

Up next are a series of bookshelves built from ply reclaimed from the old shed.

I built six of these units and although they need some tidying up they are now painted and hold a large number of my gaming books - as you can see from the picture below my 'movie' posters are also starting to grace the walls.

The following set of photos are a series taking in the whole games room...with the first lay of the table across the room, This is 17ft long by 6ft deep.

Looking back up the room towards the kitchen...

This area will eventually be my painting area and work desk.

As mentioned above the table runs across the room - I can squeeze in an 18ft table lengthways as seen below - but it feels much tighter for the players to move around. I do have flexibility to re configure things.

So on Monday 7 of my gaming friends turned up to to christen the almost finished shed and fight out an epic ECW game using Pike & Shotte.

Thank you to Vince for some of these photos

Once again a big thank you to these chaps for helping out in the move and to all those who have offered moral and physical support during these works.

So the new shed is up and running !

Tables and disillusionment

Morning All

Latest news from the Shed, for the previous post head HERE

When I left you last I posted a picture of the first table that had been built and I am delighted to report that this has now been joined by five others.

At this point I should extend a massive thanks to Mark F (picture below) for coming round and helping me put these together - thank you Mark !! 

These tables are all 6ft long and 2.5ft wide - and this gives me a number of combinations in configuration. They are all mounted on casters to ease movement around the room.

Ultimately these also have to serve as storage units for my terrain collection.

Ebay has been my best friend here with plastic 45 litre containers bought in bulk at about £7/unit

I have also repurposed some old ikea metal baskets brought from the last house. STOP Edit - this unit has proved totally impractical and will be dismantled and reconfigured

With the tables built attention has turned to some other parts of the room - for example a rescued frame from the new house now sports a new and more appropriate shed image..

An ebay purchase of £20 provided 4 more bar stools

And the flat screen TV is now uip on the wall - with Wifi already up and running in the shed this will no doubt be used for all manner of purposes.

Finally the blinds arrived and I have started to fit these - they do need to be cut down to fit the windows.

and onto the disillusionment - I have too much stuff !!! 

Trying to store all this and maintain the clean lines of the room I am trying to recreate had me beaten on Monday...as Mark F will testify I was somewhat shaken as we started to empty the boxes and try to cram everything in...even the fortifying glass of wine (see pic below) was not enough to beat the blues

What happened next...until next time

The next post in this series can be found HERE

More progress in the New Shed

 Morning Folks

Since I left you I have when time has permitted been cracking on with the refurbishment of the new shed /games room. Since I left you last the Kitchen is now virtually finished (see part 3 HERE) and aside from handles that need to be fiited its almost good to go.

My focus in the last three weeks has been on getting the interior decorated, window frames painted and sorting out some exterior damage. 

Pictures below show the progress on the left side of the main room

Below - untouched

Below - new lights fitted, ceilings and walls painted

Below - Believe it or not the room is now decorated - so much stuff to sort !

The good news is that all the ghastly painting is now done and attention last week turned to the new floor. I was able to source a new laminate floor from Selco for £7.99 per square metre and with almost 50 square metres to cover this still came in quite expensive. A massive thanks to my ex neighbour Mark for all his help on this one. We managed to get the floor laid in a day !!

Below - starting the job...

Almost half way

Job completed...you can also see the window frames are finished in picture

Now that the floor is done I can get on with the exciting stuff - building the games tables !!

Another £450 timber arrived on Friday and stored in the garage.

It was time to assemble this new toy - things should be much quicker than a hand saw

With a couple of hours free on Monday the first table rolls off the assembly line...

The tops are repurposed doors from the annex we are living in cut down to 6ft in length. 

There are going to be six of the these tables giving me the options of a 5ft x 18ft table or a 6ft x 15ft table. Of course I can always extend further in width/length with the use of extra boards. These are all mounted on casters as per my previous tables.

The plan is to store all my terrain under these and put all the figures into some new custom cupboards (to be designed and built)

With a bit of luck the tables should be complete this week and then the games can start !!

Catch up soon

Next post is HERE

Every Shed needs a Kitchen !

Good Morning All and I hope you all had a fabulous New Year. 

The previous post on the Shed build can be found HERE

The last few days have been pretty hectic at the new home as we continue to settle in. A vast amount of ground has now been cleared and we are starting to get a little bit more organised. I think I mentioned in a previous post that we had installed a new kitchen into the annex where we are currently living and rather than throw away the old one I stored this in one of the garages for a rainy day.

That rainy day arrived sooner than I expected (mind you we have had a lot of rainy days in the last 2 months) when a good friend of mine offered to help me install the units into the new shed (aka Eric's super dooper new games room). Lets face it every Games room needs a kitchen.

The Shed already had a kitchen with plumbing but as you can see from the picture below it was disgusting. So two weekends ago Mark (my old neighbour and not one of the gaming Marks) arrived on scene to start this project.

The first job was to rip out all the old units and consider how best the retained units could be utilised. Fortunately we had a enough cabinets to create a workable pattern and by using some old cupboards also reclaimed on site we had sufficient building materials to build ourselves the new kitchen.

We took the opportunity to boxing in all the pipes and boiler (yes the new shed has heating). Things were starting to progress. By the end of the first day we could see things coming together.

In the following week I cracked on with other projects including the relighting of the shed with new led strip lights. These have made a massive difference to the light levels in the room and will hopefully be more efficient that the old flourescent tubes.

I also tackled the cupboard doors and repainted these with a specialist cabinet paint.

So yesterday Mark arrived at 08.00hrs and we cracked on with the build. By 3pm the doors were on, the plumbing reconnected and the wall cabinets secured. Things were looking great.

Total cost for all this around sixty quid - 30 for the paint and 30 for the new tap. Everything else was recycled including the stainless steel sink found in the back of one of the garages'

All that needs to be done now is touch up the doors, fix the pelmets and source some handles. Hopefully these will be sorted in my next post.

Apologies that there is little gaming going on at the moment but I am rather busy..

All the best

Part 4 of the project can be found Here