A new Grotto for da Gobbo

Hi y’all

My thanks for those of you who managed to get through my last post as self indulgent as it was. This post as promised is pure hobby, pure as it combines two of my main hobbies into one project. 

When my daughter finished university, she decided she would stay where she studied and work/live. As sad as I was that she wasn’t coming home… well basically I’d cleared all of her junk out of her room (the biggest bedroom in the house) and had it decorated and deep cleaned (girls are gross too, turns out) and then I moved my gaming stuff in, all within a fortnight. It was a blitzkrieg action designed to bewilder missus Gobbo and take over the space before she could object and find another use for it - lol.

While I was doing this, I was thinking about what the room needed, what my gaming needed. I mean, when we think of wargaming, we think of glorious miniatures, beautiful terrain and cool rule sets. What we rarely think of, is what we play ON. Growing up, i've played games on the floor, my dining room table covered in a cloth with books for hills and all that stuff, just like the majority of us. My setup in the old grotto was a 8’x4’ mdf board, painted green and partially covered with a flocked sheet, all sat on a set of trestles. More than adequate, I know and one that I’ve played some amazing games on too, but I really wanted something that was more bespoke and useful for ALL the types of games I play, wargames and board games of all kinds and now i'm older, have the space for it and a little bit of knowledge on how to go about making the vision come true. For this I took to the interwebs for inspiration and try to find a table that fit the bill, however I wasn’t looking to buy a table as the type I wanted was running at well over £1000 depending on build quality, instead it was my intention to build it myself. A tall order surely? but as I said in the previous post I've taken up woodworking as a hobby as part of my journey into middle age.

So without further ado, and because I have very few build photos (wasn't blogging remember...) here is the table.

the tops of the table with the cup holders cut out

the table top coming together,
the open sides are for hidden card mechanics in games

green flocked sheet from the old board repurposed 

the bottom part of the table, for playing smaller games,
board and card games

with it's final finish on, looks nice and shiny...
oh and a dragon flying over it

interior table top is 6'x3'

looking good, but quite finished yet!

time to add a table top so bigger games can be played

upper table has a 6'6"x 3'6" playable surface

oh yeah and i added LEDs to the inside for some mood lighting

playing Civilisation the board game on the inner table

The Great Wall - brilliant game

add a drop cloth over the top

and my home made rubber terrain mat (more on that to come)

and my scratch built Star Wars Legion terrain and it becomes 
a proper wargames table...

Now that's what I call a nice gaming table and suitable for da Grotto, if I do say so myself lol. 

hope you enjoy

dGG

p.s the build cost about £200 in materials and took around 18 hours to build (without drying time) over the course of about a week.