Poker Table Day 6-Officially a Table Now

Today, I upholstered the middle of the playing surface.

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I also installed the legs and support beams.

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While it’s not a playable poker table just yet, it is technically a table now.

Up next: Upholstering the race track (can be seen in the background of the last two pictures), then fun with Plexiglas and rope lights.

Poker Table Day 5–Upholstering the Rail

Today I decided to try my hand at upholstering, and I’m not going to quit my day job. For what I’m doing, it ended up looking pretty good, but like most projects of mine, there are slight imperfections that I’ll definitely know about.

I started out getting the foam all cut out so it can attach to the rail.

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Then I glued it to the wooden part of the rail.

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Then I used the kitchen knife to cut it so it overlapped a bit.

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Then it was time to put the cloth over the padding. I put the padding and the wooden part on top of the micro suede. The fabric was barely wide enough.

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I did the outside first, and probably went through 1000 staples.

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Here’s the outside finished.

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Then I did the inside, which I didn’t take pictures of in progress. I started by cutting a line in the middle of the cloth from end to end. Then I cut toward the straight sides, and on the curves from the center to the outer part of the curves. Another 1000 staples later, it looked like this.

Up next: installing the legs, upholstering the playing service and race track, painting the Plexiglas and installing the rope light.

Poker Table Day 4–Cup Holders Cut and Upholstery Starting

I didn’t get a lot of in-progress shots, but here’s the state of my table so far.

I ripped the hardboard into 15/16” strips to act as a hard edge to the playing surface and racetrack. This avoids a “v” where the upholstered pieces come together. Just look at the gap between your couch cushions to see what I mean. I didn’t want that gap between these parts of the table because cards or chips might catch there.

I put the hardboard on the playing surface with brad nails. In hindsight, I should have probably bought shorter nails, because some of them shot out the bottom of the playing surface. There are going to be staples galore down there later, so it probably doesn’t matter.

I adhered the foam to the playing surface using the spray glue, then cut the foam out using a kitchen electric knife. Here I’ve reassembled the playing surface and racetrack to make sure that I have room for the hard edge on the inside of the racetrack. I think I do.

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It’s getting close.

Up next: upholstering the playing surface, installing the hard edge and upholstering the racetrack (both edges).

Yet to come: upholstering the rail, installing the rope light and Plexiglas, final assembly.

Poker Table Day 3-More rail work, snow breaks, and starting the playing surface

The third day was a lot like the 2nd, but I had a lot more time thanks to the snow. That’s a snow drift up to our window. We got 18 inches but it was 4 feet in some places. It was my first “snow day” from work in about 4 years.

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Since the rail was designed to be basically the same cut repeated, I just had to do the repetition.

Here, I have most of the cuts completed, and am ready to start gluing and screwing. But first, I drilled several holes and used long nails to align everything. Gluing and screwing is done one layer at a time, and I didn’t want to gradually get myself off track.

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Here, I’m about to screw in the last layer. Note the nail and the piloted screw hole. I found that I got a tighter fit if I clamped next to the screw I was putting in.

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Snow is also a good excuses for letting glue dry. We thought we’d be stuck in our neighborhood for weeks, but a plow came by about an hour after this picture. So, I was able to use gas powered tools today too.

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Here’s the glued rail on top of the base with the playing surface (yet to be cut) on top of the base.

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T-nuts being installed to the rail to allow it to later be installed to the base. t-nuts are used because after the rail is upholstered, I won’t have access to the nut.

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Now it’s time to cut the playing surface and racetrack. These are cut out of the same piece of wood. There is a lot of writing on the wood here because I was trying to figure out how far apart the cup holders should go so they’re equally spaced. I had to break out some geometry to figure it all out. In this picture, you can also see the t-bolts in the playing surface area.