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

Happy Christmas & Eleven Years strong

 Good morning all

As the title reads this post is celebrating all things festive and my blog's eleventh birthday !  The birthday was on 6th December

Before I crack on with the annual review let me update you on progress from the 'new home front'.

Seven days ago we moved in proper to the new home. Well actually we have moved into the two bedroom annex that is on site given the main house has no heating, lighting or water and a leaky roof. All of these issues were known in advance and given one option might be to tear the existing house down its not a problem. We were always planning to move into the annex and things have been made much more comfortable with a brand new fitted kitchen and bathroom turned around in under a week. The whole place has also been given a complete redecoration by yours truly (all those painting skills have come in handy). 

The move was hampered by sub zero temperatures for much of the week but fortunately a new wood burner in the annex has kept us toasty and warm and things are starting to fall into place. The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place last monday when we finally completed the sale of our old family home. It was sad to see the the old place go and if the new owner has only a small fraction of the happy memories I have from that house then they are a lucky man.

As mentioned our move was blessed with a light snowfall which of couse made everything look very pretty and our 200 metre long driveway very lethal..

The New Shed following this years first snowfall.

 The new 'drive'  looked very picturesque

So onto the main thrust of this post - it is Shed Wars 11th Birthday and as you can see from the stats below the blog is still collecting followers and new hits

I finally topped the 500 follower list (I think the 2018 number is wrong) and page views are nearing the 2 million mark. Thius has all been accomplished with very little new content or activity.

2022 has been very much focussed on finding our new home/project and as such both the number of wargames and wargaming activities have been somewhat curtailed. Hopefully things will change as 2023 develops.

Highlights of 2022 must include

January's game - The Battle of Ginnis - more Here

I was published twice in the year by Wargames illustrated firstly with a rather good article on the Wars of the Roses games we fought  

Our contribution to supporting Billhooks had not gone unnoticed by the authors and WI and I was asked around this time to contribute to the Billhooks Deluxe ruleset (recently published). Sadly my article was not published in the final copy due to size constraints.

Of course the big event took place in March when we refought the battle of five armies at Imber Court

This was a massive 28mm fantasy wargame featuring over 2500 figures. More Here

A write up of this was also published in Wargames Illustrated.

In April I finished my late Crusader army 

and in May we refought the Battle of Arsuf twice  - more Here

Throughout the year we played more games including US Cavalry vs Indians, the English Civil War and Muskets and Tomahawks. I just wasn't  very good at publishing them.

As the year drew on we became more and more focussed on the house move so things started to ease off in the shed.

Perhaps the last big game in the old shed was our refight of the ECW Battle of Edgehill. here

This was a tight affair but ably demonstrated that my own ECW collection was now sufficient to fight most big battles of the period...

And so an end of gaming in the old Shed. In the past 20 years the Shed has welcomed dozens of players, hosted hundreds of games and seen thousands of tiny men march to the drums of war. It was my den, my man cave, ,my retreat from the pressures of life. It will be missed. However as I sit here tapping out these words on my keyboard  I have a new shed to decorate and a new table to build and a new adventure to begin.

As for the new adventure stay close because I will be revealing some news in the next week or so ...

Wishing you all a very merry christmas and a happy new year

Eric the Shed

The NEW Shed part 2

Good Morning All

part 1 can be found HERE

Last weekend several of my gaming friends volunteered to help empty the old shed and transport the collection to the new premises. I don't think any of them truly believed how much stuff I had accumulated over the last 20 odd years.

Fortified with bacon sandwiches and coffee it took about two hours for eight of us to empty the old shed and to load up one large van and four cars. Two estate cars were needed just to carry my figures ! Fortunately I had boxed most of the stuff in the previous weeks.

The picture below shows the main part of the old shed with stuff stacked up and ready to go..

The second room in the old shed was a bit more chaotic.

As we started emptying the building it dawned on me that my gaming tables were not going to be leaving the premises. They were just too big to get through my house to the van. So sadly these would have to be broken down and rebuilt at the other end.

So two hours later a small copnvpoy left Surbiton and headed south west. Fortunately the M25 was behaving itself and we all arrived safely at the new games destination 25 minutes later.

Unloading was significantly easier as the vehicles could be brought right up to the new shed and with a line formed all the vehicles were unloaded within the hour.

Sitting in the middle of my new games room was about 90% of my collection

I say 90% because there is still some more stuff to bring...

That night nursing a beer I returned to my old shed and looked inside - it was empty (almost)  but it had brought so many wonderful memories...

A big thank you to Stuart, Mark F, Mark K, John, Tony, Vince, and Colin for their support last weekend. Without your help it would have taken so much longer.

Next up ....refurbishing the new gaff

Part 3 can be found Here

The NEW Shed - part 1

Morning folks

Just to bring people up to speed my wife and I recently completed our purchase of a new home. By Christmas we have to move out of our existing home and transport 30 years of life to the new gaff...the fact that the new home is run down (almost derelict in places) makes it all rather exciting.

On the positive front the new home has a rather super wooden building that will for the time being serve as my new games room (Mrs Shed wants to convert it into an air bnb chalet). This old building was used as an office by the previous owners. 

The building itself is about 30ft by 20ft and has a Loo, central heating and a kitchenette all are in desperate need of repair or replacement. The building is surrounded by brambles and ferns, covered in ivy and in some areas in need of repair.

Inside the office was abandoned, old desks, phones, computers and vast amounts of paper.

So this week I have been clearing the ground to see what condition the building is really in...the front entrance is OK but water damage and rot has set in around the base.

Clearing the ground has helped inspection

The building has been built on a slope and it was only when clearing the overgrowth did I realise how high the base had been built...before below

After clearing the ground

Inside the office has now been cleared - just some scrap metal to go

The interior is actually pretty good - needs a massive clean, a lick of paint and a new floor.

As work progresses I'll keep you posted...

Part 2 can be found HERE