New Gaming Room Finally Taking Shape

New Gaming Room ... slowly taking shape

The whole economy isn't exactly in top gear at the moment, and the repercussions for that go pretty deep for everyone.

You don't have to look too hard to find empty warehouses, shopfronts, or even churches these days. Awesome great spaces that are basically sitting there in mothballs, un-used.

Here is one example of a church in our area which has been sitting vacant for a number of years. I have often looked through the windows of the meeting hall at the rear of the building, and thought "What a Great Gaming Room that would make !".

Anyway ... fast forward to today, and after a pretty easy run of enquiries, negotiations .. and some work ... have managed to score a 2 year lease on something even better - the whole Front of the old Church !

So, opening up in another 4-6 weeks ... my All New Gaming Room !

Here is a quick photo tour of what we have so far, and what the plans are for the next stages.

This is the main section of the church, looking out from the altar towards the "congregation".

In its day, this seated 300 people, so looking at the space again, one could easy visualize rows upon rows of pews full of people. What do you see when you see this space ?

I see at least 4 REALLY BIG tables, packed with scenery and figures ... plus room for at least a dozen players floating between the tables.

Have got 8 laptops so far, plus a handful of touchscreen Tablets for players to interact with the games. Wireless reception inside the building is perfect, with no obstructions anywhere, so all the touchscreen tablets get full reception with the game server.

A lot of natural light makes the whole space light and airy during daylight hours. Sweet !

Wonderful, 1970's style stained glass windows cover the northern aspect of the room.   (We are in Australia - so the Nth is the Sunny Side !)

Another view from the pulpit. In addition to the banks of heaters lining the alcoves, there is also a heavy duty set of speaker cabling running under the carpet, and concentrating in a switchboard under the pulpit.

Need to get that wired up, so we can play period music and battlefield sound effects throughout the building.

Needless to say that the acoustics inside here are superb - they don't build em like this anymore.

Here is an intermediate hall behind the front of the building, with a snazzy room divider that slides in and out.

Double blind Kriegspiel anyone ?

Cant help but admire the woodwork used in the construction. Those vertical beams you can see are completely solid chunks of wood, from one end to the other.

I can't imagine trying to source wood in those dimensions these days !

View from the center of the hall, looking towards the Altar. Hopefully this shot gives some idea of just what a VAST space this is.
 

Amazing woodwork, hey ?
Love it.

It gets better over on the left here.

This is the spot where the original organ was installed. There is a 2-tiered raised  floor behind the wall, which I suppose housed part of the choir.

Whilst the actual organ pipes are no longer to be found, the holes and clamps for the pipes are still in pace. I do intend getting a replica of the organ pipes made up out of PVC tubes, and spraying them in shades of Gold & Copper.

Here is where the old base of the organ once sat. This is going to be converted into a sort of kitchen area, with food prep and some big wash basins for big cleanups.

You can see in the middle of the picture there that we have added doors in the  cutout section to access the "Batcave" behind the organ facade.

 

Yes !  A Secret Batcave at last !

More on the Batcave in a sec, but first, lets have a quick look at the command station.

After all, all good Commanders need to find dominating position on the high ground to oversee the movements of their troops.

Lets see what we can do here in this case .....

Out in the foyer, through another set of doors, and we have a good sturdy staircase heading up to the command center.

Up up up we go ....

Up to the command center proper.

This is a huge area up here, with tiered floor sections, and a balcony overlooking the entire hall.

View down from the balcony.

.. and another shot from the balcony.

 Now, back to the Batcave part of the building.

 Here is the other one of the secret doors built into the port side of the Organ bays.

 Which now opens into an area about the size of a small shed.

We are currently in the process of converting this into a proper bathroom .. which of course, you need somewhere nearby in any gaming room.

And another one to the starboard of the organ bay.

We actually got super lucky finding a pile of doors somewhere else in hard rubbish, and these doors do fit in pretty well with the rest of the wood.

Bit more work going on at the moment to finish off of the door jambs properly, and its all done. Almost there already.



Here is the area on the starboard side of the batcave. Building a wall between here and the bathroom, leaving this other area - with the "Bat Pit" as the computer room.

Few more weeks, and Im going to need some pretty big tables to fill up the space :(