Shed Wars 12th Birthday & Annual Roundup

 

Afternoon All

Delighted to report that Shed Wars is now 12 years old and as the blog approaches its teenage years I am delighted that it is still going strong with more posts, hits and comments than ever before. Indeed I can announce that over 2 million views have now been reported on the site since its birth and with growth of over 7% this year I can only hope that as I post more content growth will continue.

As has been the case on previous years I usually use the blog's birthday as a round up of the previous years activity and comment on next years plans. This post will be no different although the year has been dominated by one major event. This was of course our house move (and shed displacement) at the back end of 2022. We have now been in the new home since Xmas of 2022 and although the building renovations are yet to start I can assure you that Mrs Shed and I are still delighted to have made the move and are still very much in love with our little bit of leafy Surrey.

The refurbishment of the new shed dominated the first part of the year and it is staggering to look back on the transformation of my new man cave - both internally and externally.

External views when we arrived

Outside has been repaired and given a new coat of paint. Landscaping and a new terrace sometime in 2023

This is what we were confronted with when we moved in - an old office. Once emptied its true potential could be imagined.

But before renovations we had to move in my wargames collections

The finished article with an 18ft table

The cupboards at the back hold all my figures and all the terrain is stored under the tables

So aside from some serious shed painting it wasn't until September that I was able to return to figure painting. 

Picking up where I left in October last year I managed to crank out another 850 Hoplites bringing the total to 1000. Current focus is to complete my Greek Army before turning my attention to Successors and Persians.

Although not shown I did manage to paint up a few more Saracens, Crusaders, Normans and English Civil War figures to complement my existing collections. The ultimate goal will be to have around 2000 figures in each focussed period.

2023 was also a momentous year for my hobby plans. With the new room kitted out I decided that I would endeavour to share my passion for this hobby with other likeminded souls (aside from my regular gamers). The Shed Wars Experience was launched in July and for as little as £40/day visitors can take part in my epic battles. All the details are on the website HERE.

In time the new home will have a number of airbnb style units for gamers to stay over and enjoy long weekends in the company of Eric the Shed ;-)

 

To support the launch I invited wargames Illustrated to come down and enjoy the hospitality of the Shed - a grand day was had by all as I put on a ficticious epic battle set in the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrians were commanded by none other than Billhooks author Andy Callan who also graced us with his presence.

A grand time was had by all and following a few inquiries I hope that we will see further guests joining us in the New Year. The diary of planned events for 2024 will be up on the website soon but I am always open to impromptu bookings and ad hoc events from individuals and clubs around the country or abroad. 

As soon as the shed was finished back in the spring I was keen to get the gaming back in motion and this year has seen somer truly wonderful games set out on the new larger table. These includfe in no particular order...

A zulu invasion...

A refight of Salamanca....

Big Billhooks.....

A refight of the Battle of Arsuf...

Most recently ....Pirates

Dark Ages - Normans v Saxons

The Battle of Hattin

and loads more besides....

Since our move to the outside of the M25 I have not seen many of my mates who I used to regularly play with in the old shed and once the roadworks are finished on the A3/M25 Junction I do hope that they will visit more frequently. Said Roadworks are adding almost an hour to journey which should only be 25mins ! For the record I do miss you guys...

For those who live on the outside of the motorway thank you for your continued support and welcome to the new chaps. The shed now regularly hosts six on a Monday night and for the vast majority of gamers fun is had by all. 

I wish you all a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

As for next year a large amount of my time will be focussed on the grounds and house build BUT this should not prevent me from continuing to devise new scenarios, add to my figure collection and build more terrain.

Current thinking includes...

Completing the Greeks, Successors and Persians

Starting on the American war of Independence

Refighting the battles of the Barons war (Lewes, Ely etc)

Starting our efforts to refight all the Battles of the Peninsular War

and following up on our Batytle of the Five Armies hosting the Battle of Pelonnor Fields.

Thank you all for reading this blog, your comments are most welcome and I wish you all the very best for 2024

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

Shed Extension finished

So following on from the last post I can now report the Shed is now open for business - its all tiied, painted and generally sorted out. However thanks to the Covid 19 pandemic nobody can come round....YET.

Despite argung with Mrs Shed that because the new table (its six foot wide) meets the social distance requirements she is having none of it and my chums cannot come round.

I am sure we will be rolling those dice soon...

A final thank you to my daughter for finishing the 'pub sign' - it has two sides and does look rather splendid in its hanging frame

Hidden down the end of the garden...is it a pub?

Its the Shed Wars Bar sign

Close up of Side A

Close up of Side B - the original shed was built in 2005 - the sign can be switched to show each side...two for the price of one

look after yourselves

Eric the Shed

Another Shed extension part 7

Hi Folks

 The project is almost complete, the clear up has happened and it is now onto the finishing touches.

The previous post is here if you missed it.

Lets start in the workshop area of the shed. The work area is made up of a few tatty old pieces of MDF - what better than to spruce it up with granite affect tiles. Better still they are wipe clean.

Before

As you can see in the picture below the whole area has been given a thorough tidy up and clean. I should now be able to find everything I need

The rest of the work shop/store room has also been given a spring clean with all the large terrain now grouped together according to genre.

and finally all the figures are now situated in this room. All the boxes are labelled and sorted by period and scale.

The two tables below have been topped with green felt (not for snooker) and can be used for projects or a separate table. They form a four foot square area.

Final shot of this room - I can now access the door in the far end !!

Moving into the main games room all my boardgames are now sorted and in one place.

Finally I rearranged the tables to form the biggest space possible and still allow access around most of the table. The final measurement is 6ft wide by 14.5ft. Just the right size to allow coverage by my cloths.

I reckon their is sufficient size around the table for some barstools - so now on the hunt

Another shot from the far end - the rifle is a wooden copy of a Martini Henry - I bought this for my old man one Xmas a few years back and when he passed on my mother handed back all his paraphenalia.

The last job to do is to sort out all the scatter terain I have accumulated. These are all in bixes now on racks in the main room. I'll get round to this shortly.

Add caption

The pub sign is almost finished....which I will share in the next post

take care & stay safe

Another Shed Extension part 6

Good Evening Folks

part 5 can be found HERE

Cannot believe April is almost over and I have effectively been isolating myself from the big bad world for more days than I care to imagine....

If the truth be told I have been so busy the days are just flying past and since I took on the responsibility of managing an allotment I just don't seem to have enough hours in the day to do everything.

The next big task on the shed project was to replace the windows in the last extension with another window from Mark's ex conservatory. It took a bit of time to cut out the right shape and manhandle the beast in but it was worth it for the extra light. As a bonus the windows open

The sign seems rather apt !! 

With this new window in I then had to rebuild the inside workshop area, it also got a coat of paint - I used up the last of the blue and yellow

The shed extension work has now moved into a massive sort out and clear out.

This has been both torture and a labour of love, every box has been sorted, every screw & nail graded according to size and the waste pile is building day by day.

The good news is that I seem to finally be coming to the end and as a treat I persuaded Mrs Shed we needed an electronic labelling machine...

So I now need to label the hundreds (maybe I exaggerate) boxes of figures...

about 2/3rd are in this shot


A few other updates...Shedson is still up at Imperial waiting to take his exams but hes a good boy and thinks of his dad quite a lot..it does help that I sent him beer and a bbq..so he sent me this sign..

and not to be forgotten I asked Shed-daughter if she would paint me a pub sign for the 'new -shed'

Heres the starting picture

and here is progress so far

As this thread of posts on the new shed comes to an end I am going to switch across top my war of the Roses project - take care everyone and stay safe

EtS

part 7 can be found here

Another Shed extension part 5

Hello out there? I hope you are all safe, well and keeping occupied in these difficult times.

The previous post can be found HERE

Its been a couple of weeks since I last posted and buy now you are probably thinking the shed is all done?

Well you could not be more wrong.

Unfortunately the bulk of this time has been rather uncomfortable, shall we just say that I have been hit with a bout of gout (probably too much wine drunk during lock down) in my left foot and movement has been somewhat curtailed.

The good news is that by the Easter weekend I was back up on my feet and some more progress can be shown.

Once the tables were built I could cut the inserts to allow extensions to the tables if required. You can get a sense of these in the two photos below.

It was whilst playing around with these that I realised the room was just too white so I took a leap and added a splash of colour from some old blue paint I had knocking around.

With the main table room decorated it was time to turn my attention to the central part of the shed. This was emptied and then rebuilt/ redecorated.

Before Shot

After Shot - as you can see some yellow has been added as well

I even tidied up and re-painted the roof joists !

Everything moved out from the middle...how much stuff do I really need !!

With the centre finally complete I could start putting these back in their rightful places. More on this organisation in a final post.

Finally I decided to hang some of my late fathers stuff in the shed - I think they go rather well

These are three complete sets of players cigarette cards including a full set on regimental badges and standards, colonial uniforms and regiments of London/Home Countioes

Stay safe folks - more soon

part 6 can be found HERE