Gaming Garage(TM) Conversion - Part 5 - Done!

Well folks, I'm now completely moved in and everything is (pretty much) in its place. To start off here's my hobby/blogging space. I picked up a daylight LED lamp from Hobbycraft and having it right over head should mean decent lighting for all my future painting efforts. I've intentionally left my Imperial Knights out of the cabinet of models so that they're there to remind me I can produce something good when I put my mind to it. Of course, I've still got two to paint but that's another story. 

I also put up some racks for all of my paints. My Dad had the excellent suggestion of using electrical trunking to make the shelves and happily I found three 2m lengths of 38 mm trunking for £10 from Screwfix. Throw in a box of 200 screws for 40p and you can't really get much cheaper storage for 144 paints! 

Here's where I'm storing all my armies too. I actually thought I'd have more spare space than this but it's pretty cramped in there. Still, I could take the bag out of the bottom shelf and expand onto there if necessary or the SW shelf can be moved up a bit to squeeze an extra shelf in the bottom. They're all in there anyway and easily accessible for painting and gaming and aren't either fading or collecting tons of dust. I call that a win. 

Here's some shots of the table out for the first 40K action in the Garage. It saw a narrow victory for the forces of Tzeentch over the Space Wolves. I hope to see many more battles played in here. There's plenty of room around the table. The only think I haven't really sorted is there's no longer much space to have reserves lying around. The old static table had shelves running along each long edge which gave lots of space for this sort of thing. There's my desk of course but maybe a couple of collapsible small tables would be a good plan. I'll have a think.

There's still a lot of sorting of all my stuff to do with hopefully plenty of stuff to put on eBay to fund future projects. I've got a pile of sprues for Tau, Space Wolves and Orks that I bought thinking I might build them some day but don't really see the benefit in keeping hold of any more. If I haven't written an army list that needed them in the last however many years then I'm unlikely to suddenly do so. It'd be nice to have a bit of a cull of some of my collection too. Again, there's units I simply never use and a lot of them aren't painted so why keep them? 

You know what? I think this calls for my first ever 40K Addict Hobby Season To Done badge!

Well, that's that then. Hopefully I can now focus on getting some stuff painted. Not enjoying looking across that board and seeing some unpainted scenery....

Gaming Garage(TM) Conversion - Part 4

Well folks this is probably the penultimate post on this project. I'm actually blogging from the Gaming Garage(TM) right now! There's very little actual work to do on it. All that's really left is to move everything in. I'll post a final update when that's happened so you can see everything nicely stored away and my hobby area properly set up.

One the face of it not much has changed since the pictures taken just before the big X-wing game but there's some finishing touches that, well, finish it off,

These pictures shows my hobby area. The tall larder unit on the left will hopefully give me enough space to store all of my armies with some room for expansion. There's a little voice in my head saying I'll need more shelves but we'll see what happens. Most likely I'll add a second one in the top section. It's deceptive how much space an army takes up sometimes but in the next post you'll hopefully be seeing it full of miniatures. Only one tiny thing left to do in this area is to put some white finishing strips on the ends of the shelves to neaten them up. 

These pictures are just to give you some idea of where everything is. The whiteboard was up in the old gaming room. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice the list of scenery I have been intending to create for a long time. That'll be high up my list of priorities once I'm fully moved in. You can see there's a nice big Velux window above my hobby area which, even with the shelves blocking some of the light, gives me a good chunk of natural light for painting in the day time. I intend to get at least one daylight lamp to help me paint better at night.

Down the opposite end of the room (a couple of metres from the desk) are my two large cupboards for more storage. These will primarily house my scenery etc as they'll be the ones that support the board (tucked in behind at the moment). They're on castors so they can be rolled into place, the brakes applied at then the board slid on top. I want to make some adjustments to the board so they slot underneath tightly to prevent the board moving around. It could also do with a spot of reinforcing too. You can also see my little electric radiator that works wonders at keeping the place warm. It's not a big room and well insulated so we'll never be stood shivering in Winter.

Above the large wheeled cupboards are four top-hinged cupboards for storing stuff I won't need access too that often. That means all my boxes of models yet to be assembled and empty boxes for things I've got out on display etc. There's not a huge amount of room in them but it keeps things out of the way and stops them collecting dust.

Right, next time I post about this I'll hopefully have the vast majority of my stuff moved in. I'm intending to sort through it as I move it in though so it won't be an overnight thing. There's still a couple of finishing touches here and there. Like I say, I want to adjust the gaming board and maybe add another shelf or two inside the cupboards as required. I also want to create some sort of paint rack. Oh and I'm going to source some cheap folding stools.

Gaming Garage(TM) Conversion - Part 3

Another 3 weeks where I've been almost completely AWOL. Sorry for that! I've been keeping pretty busy though with the garage conversion. Last time I posted we'd sorted all the walls with insulated plasterboard and the Velux window had been installed. Well I'd inadvertently set myself a deadline of Sunday 15th because I'd arrange a big X-wing game between Matt, Scott, Sam & I and we'd need a venue! With my old gaming room dismantled the new one needed to be ready. That meant a solid weekend of work getting the roof done and the gaps filled and then a week of evenings decorating:

Difficult to get my phone to play but as you you can see, we successfully created the skylight. The whole ceiling was boarded out with 12 mm plasterboard before I donned a protective suit, goggles, mask and gloves and set off into the new loft space to install some insulation. Getting around in there wasn't much fun but it'll be worth it.

Now we could start working on all of the joins and screw holes with some filler. Once that had dried sufficiently I went at it with an orbit sander:

It was hard going because I kept having to stop to let the dust settle so I could even see what I was doing! Obviously I had a mask and goggles but still wasn't much fun again. You can just about make out the lights I've installed, two sets of three LED spots to light up the table and over toward the desk. The desk will have some daylight lamps too when I get round to sorting that.

Once the dust had cleared (the next night), I set about giving the entire room a layer of Basecoat (see this is hobby after all!). This should hopefully make for a better finish. The filling isn't totally perfect but I don't really want to fork out for a plasterer on what is still essentially a shed!

Finally, I threw some Ceramite Whi... ahem... Dulux Brilliant White at the ceiling and some cream colour on the walls. I'd toyed with different colours but figured it's a small room so plain, bright walls is the way to go to maximise the light.

My Dad came round for another session last Saturday which saw him assembling the units whilst I laid the carpet tiles. I originally planned on lino/Karndean but carpet tiles are significantly cheaper (I'd given up trawling gumtree/eBay of people selling off boxes of Karndean). They're also easy to fit. I still managed to make things look difficult mind you! With the carpet in we brought in the units but didn't have much time to do anything else. The good news is my old tabletop fits over the two units (fitted with castors) perfectly with a reasonable amount of space around it.

As you can see, we were able to play some X-wing in there on Sunday but I'll do a proper report of our epic game (my Tantive's first outing) in a separate post. I've since cleared everything away and covered all the furniture/carpet so I can put a second coat on the walls. I think the ceilings are passable but will check again in the natural light in the morning when I'll be painting the walls. I did manage to get the blind installed on the window though but I didn't have my phone on me so you'll have to wait for a picture of that.

Hopefully next time I post it'll be all but finished and I'll take plenty of pictures so you can see all the bits and pieces I've done. It'll take me a while to fully decamp into there though as I'm using it as a chance to sort through all my stuff and eBay what I don't need.

In other news, I've also made a start on my Blood Bowl Human team:

I'll post more about the team soon but at least I'm doing some painting. Incidentally, the base isn't going to be icy, it's just grey primer and I painted the rim black to tidy up a little. I've also invested in some new brushes from Rosemary & Co. so I'll let you know what I think of them. Seem pretty good so far. The garage will hopefully be done in the next couple of weeks so I can get some serious hobby progress made.

Gaming Garage(TM) Conversion - Part 2

I may not have posted in a while but I have been busy nonetheless. Work continues on the conversion of my garage into a gaming/hobby space. It's difficult to make great strides when I'm only getting to work on it sporadically but I've managed to get another couple of sessions in with my Dad so there has been progress.

Fortunately my garage already has power and lighting so we were able to create a new ring main from the existing breaker. We put the wiring in before the plasterboard went up so there'll be no unsightly trunking. There'll be four sockets in the room plus a fifth in the residual garage to plug the lawnmower, etc into.

The dividing wall between the room and the residual bit of the garage got some 50 mm insulation before screwing up a couple of 2400 x 1200 mm plasterboards on the room side. On the other side two 2400 x 1200 mm sheets of 25 mm insulation cover the entire wall before some plywood was screwed in place to hold the insulation up and generally make things look tidier. I don't have any shots of it from the other side of the wall but I'll take some once the whole project is finished so you can see what I'm left with.

The walls inside the room part of the garage were all covered in insulated plasterboard which is 50 mm insulation glued to 10 mm plasterboard. This was simply glued to the wall and held in place with a couple of screws whilst it dries. The joints and screw holes were all filled but will need to be sanded down before painting. It was all a bit fiddly around the two buttresses but hopefully it'll look neat enough in the end. I'm not going to bother skimming the walls as neither me or my Dad are skilled plasterers and it's just a garage after all!

On our next session my Dad installed all of the sockets whilst I was clearing out the front of the garage and installing shelving and various brackets to try and store things like the lawn mower and my bike. There's still some crap in there but hopefully Gumtree/eBay will sort that out.

At the moment, the only natural light in the new room comes from the half glazed door. Obviously that needs sorting out. You can see from the pictures below that the lighting in there needs upgrading too.

Well, before I can do any of the lighting we'll need to get the ceiling in but before that can happen I need to get the natural light sorted....

A whopping one metre square velux window should sort that out nicely!  I'm going to remove the central ceiling joist back to the centre of the room to create a skylight. It'll be more obvious what I'm talking about when I've done it though so that can wait until I post when the ceiling is done.

There's still quite a lot of work to be done here. We've got to board and insulate the ceiling as I said. Before we do that we need to sort the wiring out for the lights too. We need to tidy up the plasterboard around the door to make that look neater. Once we've done that the room is essentially finished so it'll be a case of decorating and furnishing it. I'm not going for anything too flashy here. It'll likely be magnolia walls! I'm scouring eBay/Gumtree to try and get hold of some Karndean flooring for cheap, ideally someone who's bought too many packs and is selling the excess off cheap.

I'll then be installing some kitchen units for storage. There'll be a bank of units down the back wall and a couple of units that will be on wheels and act as the support for the gaming table. I was bored last night so did a quick mock up...

Not sure how well these pictures get across how little space there'll be around the table but should be enough! Won't be making any more progress until new year's eve at the earliest but hoping to have it ready very early next year. I had hoped to be ready before Christmas but the main delay was waiting for the Velux to be installed. What do you think so far?

Gaming Garage(TM) Conversion - Part 1

Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Well, let's face it. No one thought I was dead but it has been over 8 weeks since I last posted anything which is by far my longest dry spell. I'd love to tell you I've been working hard on my army and scenery projects but I haven't. I mostly blame the NFL but that's still no excuse for the fact that a dreadnought I started painting in early October still hasn't got three colours on it even! Anyway, depressing lack of hobby progress aside, I have some exciting DIY activities to report.

You may remember that I was planning on converting the back of my garage into a hobby space. My current gaming room will eventually become my son's proper bedroom when he moves out of the nursery so I'm being relegated to the garage. I'm not content with simply playing on the concrete floor with a heater trying to stave off frostbite! My Dad and I therefore set about converting the back of the garage into a proper room.

The idea is that from the front the garage will look unchanged. Particularly important for a) resale and b) hiding the fact that there's stuff in there. To decide how much space I had I simply opened up the garage door and decided to put up a partition wall just inside the point the door opened to. This will give me a few square metres of "garage" at the front for the lawn mower, bike, tools, etc. That leaves me a 3.5 x 2.5 m (ish) gaming and hobby space. Enough to get a 6' x 4' table in and just about be able to squeeze round it. Four people playing doubles every so often would be cosy but two should be fine. Thing is, I don't want a permanent table like I've currently got in my gaming room. It (obviously) takes up a big chunk of space and means the room can't be used for anything else. My Dad and I have come up with a cunning plan for this but I'll post some sketches up at some point to better explain it.

For now, let's take a look at my progress so far. As you can see from the picture above, I had a big pile of timber delivered last week so that we could get cracking on Saturday. Here's what the garage looked like to begin with.

As you can see there's plenty of crap in there but hopefully I'll get most of it cleared out soon. As a temporary measure we chucked everything outside to let us do the floor. With it all swept out it looked like this:

We started out with some plastic sheeting to prevent damp from rising up. Then we laid some 25 mm insulation around the edges. On top of this we placed some 4" x 2" timbers width ways:

We then screwed some more "four-be-twos" on top of this to create some joists for the flooring:

To make things cosy we put 4 inches of insulation between the joists:

We then screwed down some 18 mm plywood to create the floor. Looks pretty neat I think:

So this will be the room in the back of the garage. Doesn't look particularly big in the photos. Frankly, it isn't but it's about the same as I have now and I've managed with that for a few years now.

We then screwed another timber across the end of the floor and a further one to the roof trusses. Two more were screwed into the brickwork to create a frame. We then put some vertical timbers at 400 mm intervals to which we'll screw some plasterboard to create the partition wall:

As you can see, at this point we brought a lot of the crap back in because it had started to rain. Pretty pleased with this for a day's work anyway.

So, next up I need to take the vast majority of the crap out of the garage and to the local tip. What's staying needs to be organised into the residual bit of garage at the front. I'm then going to get some quotes for Velux windows on the back of the roof. Be good to have some natural light in there for painting.

Between now and the next time my Dad is over we'll have had all of the plasterboard delivered so we can start to make the walls but not before we've sorted all the electrics out. What do you think so far anyway?