The Table of Our Dreams

This post has been a long time in coming.  While it doesn’t have anything to do with food, it does have a lot to do with our future meal times, and eating and enjoying meals is just another facet of the entire cooking process, right? 

Back in August I had the pleasure of going to GenCon and one of the vendors was the amazing Geek Chic.  Geek Chic sells heirloom quality custom gaming furniture.  Art, Lance and I are all gamers of some sort and, since we were in need of a new dining room table anyway, getting one with all the bells and whistles seemed like the right thing to do.  These tables, and the company, are amazing. 

I dragged Lance into the vendor hall to see the tables, I took pictures on my phone and sent them to Art, and I made a down payment.  Nine months later, I have the table of my dreams.

The first time I saw the Emissary was in the hall at GenCon.  The one in this picture is a bit smaller than the one we bought.  I believe it’s 3’x5’ and ours is 4’x6’.  This one is in cherry and has a GM drawer pulled out at the end. 

Here’s another view of the same table.  The two outer leaves are in, leaving the dropped play surface open in the middle. 

You can sort of see the cup holders in this picture as well as the drawers on the sides.

And here’s a picture of the 4’x4’ Emissary.  (I think.)  Then time passed.  We saved up our nickels and dimes, Christmas gift money went to the table fund, and we were finally able to place our order in January.  From there the wood went to the mill and I tried to contain my excitement. 

May finally arrived!  The wonderful folks at Geek Chic sent us a baby picture of our table being constructed!  (The Geek Chic people all have amazing email handles like “enabler” and “accomplice.”  Just another detail that made working with them enjoyable!) 

On my drive up to New York I got The Call.  Our table was going out on the truck soon and we’d be getting it early this week!  Why does shipping take so long you might ask?  Because Geek Chic sees a table as a relationship and they actually send Geek Chic employees out with their tables to make sure everything is assembled, perfect, and explained. 

Arrive it did, late tonight. Here it is coming out of the truck with our fantastic (and obviously passionate about their products) deliverers.  You can see the cherry of the side and the bamboo of the drop surface.  Gorgeous bamboo.

Still outside and in the box.  I was trying not to bounce too much in my excitement. 

Look at that beautiful bamboo! 

While not quite as beautiful, the underside of the table is still neat. It’s got 6 drawers and the notched area on the top side is where the “ejector button” resides.  It’s there to lift the first table leaf for easy removal. 

Standing on its own four legs.  The dropped playing surface is about two inches deep.  Perfect for miniatures and everything else. 

Here it is with all five leaves on.  The leaves all have a teeny bit of gap between to allow for expansion that will occur with heat and humidity changes.  Although you can’t tell from this picture, the wood grain matches between the front of the drawers and the sides of the table.  And the wood?  It’s simply beautiful.  We opted for natural cherry and the grain is lovely. 

The diagonal pieces of wood there are the supports that allow us to set up the table the way it is set up in the GenCon pictures.  This allows for both raised and dropped surface without the fear of dice rolling under the raised leaves.  The shininess of the bamboo is due to an acrylic sheet.  This sheet acts to hold and flatten various maps or grids for every game you’d want to play.  Wet and dry erase markers can be used on it as well. 

This is the GM drawer.  It has a privacy screen/book prop as well as a nice, large surface for books and papers.  Underneath the flat desk panel is drawer space for more storage. 

The other three sides of the table have five player drawers.  These have flat tops that act as desk surfaces and the tops also open up for even more storage.  The drawers all lock in the open position and have flipper thingies that allow the drawers to be closed again. 

The metal inserts for the cup holders, which you can see in pictures from GenCon, are currently en route.  In the meantime we’ve got six cup holders to help protect the table and gaming supplies from tipped drinks.  The cup holders can latch anywhere that doesn’t have a drawer or the ejector button. 

It’s stunning.  I’m having a hard time finding the words to do it justice.

Because the company rocks, they gave us a cute dice rolling tower.  This will help us deal with our withdrawal from the great sound that dice made on our old tile table!  All the joins in the tower are laser cut and it’s amazing how smooth the sides feel!

Our Emissary, in all of its glory and very well worth the wait.  Complete with dice tower and old chairs.  Finding new chairs that can withstand long meals and gaming sessions will be our next challenge.  We can easily fit 10 chairs around this table.

We could not be more pleased with our table or our experience with Geek Chic.  If you’re a gamer of any sort, or even just someone who likes to be able to work on puzzles over the course of a week without having cats destroy things while you sleep, this is the table for you.  I truly believe that this is a heirloom quality piece of furniture that will be passed on to whichever niece or nephew shows the most interest in gaming.  This table is a functional piece of art and we’re just thrilled that Geek Chic was there at the right time and place when we were trying to decide on a table replacement!