Designing our Living Room Game Table
This post is in partnership with Rathskellers.
During the process of redesigning our living space to meet our family’s needs, one thing we always knew we wanted was a good size coffee table we could play games on.
We found a few tables that we liked that we thought could work well for this purpose, but they all felt a little off in some way; a compromise and not a true fit. We knew that with a family of our size, we wanted this table to truly be a beautiful piece of furniture that would anchor the room. The type of furniture that we could make memories around and that would last our family for years.
This led us to Rathskellers!
We’d known Rathskellers for their beautiful custom game tables. Most often these are designed to be dining room tables and we’d always thought that one day we’d get one for our home when the kids are older. They also make a coffee table called The Garrison and the more we looked at it, the more we knew this was what we were looking for.
The Garrison coffee table is a beautiful heirloom quality wooden coffee table that has a cellar underneath the hardwood leaves to provide the perfect gaming surface. Underneath and around the table are numerous drawers and compartments to allow for storage of games and other materials. In addition, it also features the aluminum rail system around the outside of the table so you can completely customize with accessories like cup holders, work tables, and bits bowls.
Calculating Adjusting all the Specs
We got to work using their online table calculator that allows you to design the table of your dreams.
This was incredibly helpful. Not only could we see the incredible amount of options available to add and customize to our table, but we were also able to discuss things like table size and how we could build a table that would fit our needs now and grow with our family as well.
First we grabbed all the possible measurements and taped them out on our floor. This was so helpful in determining scale — we even sat around the tape to see if anything felt too close for comfort.
We then worked through the rest of the calculator, choosing things like wood type, aluminum rail color, cloth options for the cellar, and of course going through the plethora of accessories for the rail system.
We were also able to choose and customize the additional storage unique to the Garrison table.
Once we got our initial build plan, we sent it to Rathskellers. From there we worked directly with their awesome team, able to ask as many questions as we had to make sure we understood all of our options and made the table of our dreams. They helped us with things that we didn’t even think of, like using jumbo cup holders vs the standard due to the differences in American and European glass sizes!
This was incredibly helpful. I can’t tell you just how grateful I am for their prompt, polite, and helpful responses to all my (many) questions. We were able to customize nearly every inch of the table to meet our personal design preferences. For instance, we were able to have the drawers and aluminum rail stained to match the table for a complete look!
The Design Diary
Once we got the build to a spot where we liked it, it was time to choose our stain and cloth options. They shipped us a design diary with all the options so we could make our decisions. (They also included an assortments of delicious and fun to try treats from Greece!)
Having the booklet was incredible. I was able to hold up each stain and decide what looked best with our over all living room design, and the natural light our room received throughout the day.
Things I was considering:
- How it matched with our current living room cabinet colors (all about them here.)
- Timelessness — we’re not going to live here forever, so I want it to have a classic look so it lasts and doesn’t go out of style.
- Matching with our other heirloom pieces, like our crokinole board. (All about our board here.)
- Which cloth colors made game components pop!
- How well it photographed — This is pretty unique to our family situation, but I didn’t want too many orange/yellow tones or too dark of a stain which can impact images requiring a lot of work in post.
I kept the book propped up so I could look it over every time I was in the room and really marinate on the decision. After I had it narrowed down to a few stain options, I emailed to ask if they could send me a few picture examples of tables in each one which further helped us narrow down our selection.
I highly recommend doing this because my number one stain choice switched once I saw a table in that stain. Even though the stain was beautiful, it was way too dark or our space when implemented full scale.
After emailing our final selections, we went through another build rundown with the Rathskellers team to make sure everything was exactly as we wanted it. They held our hand through what would have been an incredibly stressful process, making it a breeze and so fun! The whole design process took about a little over a month.
Now we’re excitedly waiting for our table to be built! I’ll be sure to share all the progress reports along the way on Instagram so be sure to follow us there to not miss out!
