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-matt s.
United States
Eugene
Oregon
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blog/22
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Well, I've been inviting you all to my Board Game Back Room for the past 6 months (5 months almost to the day on BGG) but I still haven't given a proper tour of 'The Back Room' other than the small pic in my avatar and the slightly larger one on the blogspot site, although I did post a few pics to the shelf pron geeklist a while back.
So, when you come in our house and go down the main hall a bit, there's a door to the garage here:
The gauntlet when you first enter the garage - please ignore the cat boxes (yes, 4 boxes for 3 cats - supposedly this is the ratio you're supposed to have according to somebody, probably some shadowy kitty litter exec or something)
Inside the garage is a big mess. Well, it's not THAT bad, just sort of a mess - it's somewhat organized and you can at least walk through it. Just ignore that....unless you want to buy something (NOTE: We are doing a BIG combined BGG auction later this month and a couple of the games on the table might be in it...)
I just looked closer and there's not really much to see in that pic I guess other than a bunch of boxes. On the table is Skirrid and Power Barons....
Here's the wall that we had built to create an art studio for myself back when we first moved into the house.
The original garage was actually deep enough for 2 cars on this side. This seemed like a spectacular waste of space, so we converted it. Now, here's a small shop area where I get to fix things my kids break. Or fix game boxes in need of repair. And, oh yeah, any manly stuff my wife needs done gets done here. Well, most of it....
I wanted a door with glass in it so that light from the room would help light up the garage, and also it kind of makes a connection between the garage and the room. You can also see if someone is trying to sneak up on you.
Well, here we go inside....
You will see some art supplies and various paintings strewn about in here. See, before I got into board games (and predominantly before I met my wife, got married, had kids and otherwise mucked up my wide open schedule for doing stuff I want to do) I was really into oil painting. I still am 'into' oil painting, except I never get around to actually doing it. It always seems I have a gazillion other projects for my free time now, usually related to gaming.
Here's an example of the last painting I was working on:
Ah well. I keep telling myself I'm going to sit down and paint again but it still doesn't happen very much.
Here are some shots of some of the paintings that you get to stare at when sitting at one side of the table:
Oh yeah, there's a crokinole board on that wall as well...I sometimes forget I have it hidden back there. Need to pull that sucker out again soon....
Lower down on the floor is this Pachinko machine that my dad bought 20 years ago.
It was in my room growing up and now I have it but never play it. I need to get it working again as my son is very interested in it.
Notice the back wall here is painted black.
When I was putting together the room I didn't want bright colors that would reflect on paintings and affect the look of them. But, I also didn't want a completely white room either. So, I decided one wall would provide some nice contrast if it was all black.
Also notice the 'square' motif going on - square window, square sconces, square block shelves, square wall....
To contrast that, I have a round ceiling light for the center light.
I LOVE the light rays coming out of it...I ordered the light online and noticed this cool feature, but the picture did NOT do it justice. Having it in the room makes me happy for some reason.
I also have adjustable lighting like you might see in a museum or art gallery (in fact, it sort of gives that art gallery feel). The only problem is that they are all halogen lights and they get HOT. Which, of course, heats up the room quite a bit which is good in winter, not so good in summer.
We have air conditioning pumping into the room, but sometimes it isn't quite enough.
We did put in an exhaust fan (primarily to vent out an paint odors, etc) and sometimes I turn it on to help pull out the hot air.
Over here we have my movable art rack.
(oops, it's kind of a crappy pic) It's big and heavy and pretty much stays right there. It has all sorts of sizes of canvases that I've gotten for good deals here and there. Poor things, they just stare at me blankly all day long.....sorry, couldn't resist.
You can also see part of a wooden shelving rack from the daughter of my wife's long-time friend who passed away from cancer a couple of years back...it's a nice small reminder of her and I like it despite it being slightly wobbly and a little inconvenient with the slats.
I think it's a plant stand but I use it for storing various gaming supplies, plus my nifty scanner up there on top.
Well, that's it. How do you like the room?!
Oh yeah!
I still have to show you all the games and related 'stuff'!
Here's the game wall.
That is SUMO shelving. It has a honeycomb center which makes it really strong and which allows it to hang out from the wall like that. I love the look of it.
However, I still really worry about it though...sometimes it creaks and I fear it will fall and crush me with the weight of a 100 boxes. I sometimes have nightmares of the entire wall coming crashing down on my, boxes flying everywhere. Sometimes I even think just before I come into the room "I wonder if all the shelving is still up on the walls". And, it always is. Yes, the clips holding it up are all drilled directly into the studs and I added an extra bracket in the middle of each to give it a bit more insurance.
But I still worry.
Further down on that wall there is a low shelf where more games are stashed as well as gaming parts, boxes and some art supplies.
That shelf is there because we had to build over the exposed foundation wall -- well, we could have left it exposed it wouldn't have looked nearly as nice. this also allowed for insulation and -- the 'floor shelf'! I actually really like it for keeping smaller stuff off the floor and out of the way.
To the left of this pic on the same wall are a couple is a craft cart my wife gave to me when she decided she didn't need them which I stuff all sorts of extra gaming bits and dice into, plus my gaming bowls and my dice tower.
There are also two small totes full of all my smaller games that take up space on the shelves inefficiently. They're also great for grabbing to take with me to game nights and other events.
Above that on the wall is a white board for writing down possible games for the evening when game night is at my house.
Here's the gaming table. This is from a couple of days ago when I was sorting through a thrifted copy of Clue Master Detective.
Here's what is looks like at this exact moment:
These are items I'm gearing up to put in the BGG auction I mentioned earlier. I'll post here on my blog once the auction goes live. I just have a few items in it (actually 13) but my other friends have another 125+ items in it.
I got this table for $40 from a Craigslist ad. The table cloth is an irregular one that I bought with 2 others (black and tan) from an online store that was clearancing them out.
Here's one of the 6 gaming chairs I got from St Vinny's last month for a grand total of $12.50!
They were just what I was looking for: cheap, padded, with arms, and cheap. Did I mention cheap?
Hiding behind the table on the back wall is this other 'floor shelf' that has a set of speakers, some knick-knacks, art supplies and other goodies.
Hiding even further behind the table is a stack of unopened games....
Next up after the thrifting stuff and updating my Dominion card dividers for Cornucopia is getting these opened as well as the new version of Factory Fun!
Well, that's the grand tour! I've got a lot of stuff crammed into this room, but I love it! I'm considering trying a different layout with the table but I think I'm going to have to keep it like it is now as there isn't too much room to maneuver. The new chairs crowd the room just a bit because of the arms on them, but I love having arms on my chairs so....it's worth the bit of inconvenience.
Thanks for stopping by! Now go out and enjoy the nice summer weather before heading in for a nice game or two!
Oops! Almost forgot! If you thumb this post - and come back to thumb ANY BLOG post of mine this month (July) I will be giving away something special/game related at the end of July (I'm trying something new to see if I can encourage readers to let me know if they read my posts here on BGG or not since 'hits' are not actually available on BGG) - it will either be a copy of the Ticket to Ride map (in Northern Africa) + cards that my wife and I created and submitted to the TtR design contest OR it will be a really nice hand-made copy of Bongo! (made by me!)
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Definitely like the light, the sun rays give it quite a lot of character
in one place outside of a LeRoy Neiman exhibit
...but the Crokinole Board is certainly classic abstract art!
