Poor Man's "Parquet" Poker Table

[Ragman]

I'm posting a few pics of a poker table I made on a budget. It's a little different but my home game players and I really like it. I have a round 48" table in my main poker room but wanted to have a couple other tables for when I have a tournament. The table shown here is with a racetrack; the other table I built is a 5-footer without a track.
I'm no carpenter so I wanted to do something simple, as cheap as possible and I wanted it lightweight (so I could take it down or move it easily).

Here's the process......
First, I took an old banquet table at work that I had no other use for (the table was bowed pretty badly in the middle). I like the look of a wood racetrack but I didn't want to cut out plywood as that would add a lot of weight, so I decided to use some 6" square parquet floor tiles that were leftover from a floor I put down in my home office (I bought the tiles at a garage sale for $20). I took floor adhesive and glued the tiles around the edge of the table for the track. Then I made the rail using 1x4's with 2" foam and whisper vinyl and eventually screwed them around the outside of the table. To cover up the exposed edge of the table and parquet tiles, I stained some wood trim and nailed them on. As for the playing surface I used some scrap corrugated plastic (leftover from some signs I made at work) which is about 1/4" thick and cut it to fit the area on the table inside the parquet race track. I attached headliner foam (using duct tape!) and then stapled the chocolate colored speed cloth to bottom of the plastic and mounted the playing surface to the table with carriage bolts.
I accomplished all my goals: 1)fairly easy to do for a novice like me, 2) very lightweight 3) pretty cheap -- about $130 in supplies and got two poker tables out of it (foam & whisper vinyl $60 from Joann Fabrics, speedcloth $45 from YAT and wood trim $25 from local lumber yard). I didn't include cost of the old banquet tables because they were old and I had no other use for them. The bow in the table can hardly be noticed now.
Hope the pictures turn out OK. (Poker chips & cash jumped on the table and wanted to be included in the picture ).

[byline9]

I never cared for the racetrack design much until now, but this has completely changed my opinion. I would definitely build one like this for myself now.

The parquet is just so old school, this table is an instant classic...absolutely one of the best creative uses of material I've seen here at C-T. Great work!

[Couga]

Totally diggin' the table. At first the shape catches you off guard, but in reality when you don't have a dealer (who does in a home game?) This table is much more functional. I love the racetrack. It reminds me of the old Boston Garden in the Bird days.

Well done indeed!

- Couga

[mattjrocks]

Can't beat it for the cost of materials. I was thinking Celtics when I saw the Parquet also. Nice job.

[tastic]

Cool idea! And I love those harrah's $1s in your mixed cash set...don't see many people able to/choosing to get those in quantity...very niiice!

[dad604]

That is a neat idea. I have seen rectangle tables at public room just like yours in Calgary.

[BassVillan]

Sharp table man, I'm liking it. The stacks of cash look good too.

[rakrul]

Speaking of, where did you get those? I was thinking of adding some bundles to the cash game just for HSP kicks. Was thinking of buying some Zimbabwe currency, you can get like 8kg of notes for $100 but kinda hard to get these days.

[Scoutens]

I think I might have to make sure I have a little extra flooring when my wife and I redo our dining room this summer. We're planning on using that new snap together floating floor stuff. I think I better buy an extra box "just in case" ....

Great looking table! Thanks for showing it to us and telling us how you did it!

[mipevi]

Very cool. Congrats!