Hellobee

For Christmas this year, the boys’ main gift from us was a train table since they love Thomas and Friends. Shortly before Lion’s first birthday we bought a HUGE lot of trains, tracks and accessories (we’re talking the roundhouse, Cranky, a hospital and more) off Craigslist at an incredibly low price and have been slowly adding to their collection for each holiday. Their train collection is pretty sizable and we’ve therefore wanted to get a table for awhile now, but didn’t love the look of most train tables out there. I had looked around at different coffee tables and thought about converting one to a train table, but we have space issues and weren’t sure whether we wanted to have a dedicated table just for trains. Solution: build our own that can double as a coffee table!

Now, I haven’t done any woodworking since my 6th grade woodshop “explorations” elective so I was pretty sure that the project was going to be a disaster. However, I was pleasantly surprised with how well it turned out and how quickly it came together. Did I mention that the afternoon I built it, I was called to pick up Lion from daycare because he got sick? And that we live in a condo without a garage or work space? Believe me when I say if I can do it, anyone can.

We keep the tracks set up, but have to lay down some of the items, like Cranky and the power station when we put the top back on.

I used these plans from Ana White’s site with the modifications of 1) leaving the top insert as one piece and 2) removing the lower shelf. We wanted to be able to tuck in some small chairs for the kids and also wanted to reduce the total weight of the table. I calculated how many 1 x 2’s, 1 x 3’s and 1 x 6’s needed ahead of time (subtracting for the wood I didn’t need based on my modifications) and brought my cut list to Home Depot. I had the very nice people at Home Depot make all the cuts for me, which made my job even easier.

I picked up a toddler helper about 2 hours into the project after getting a call from daycare that he wasn’t feeling well.

The Thursday before Christmas, I worked just half the day and blocked out the afternoon to build the table. I laid out all the cuts by size because it helped give me some confidence. I won’t run through all the steps here because the plans on Ana White’s site are exactly what I did. But, basically you build the top portion of the table first, attaching the 1 x 6’s, then attach the rectangle to the large plywood to make the box. You attach the 1 x 2 and 1 x 3’s to the sides of the box to make the legs, add the trim to the sides, then the trim to the top and you’re done! The actual construction took just one afternoon (about 4 or 5 hours), though finishing it (sanding, painting, etc.) took two evenings to complete after the kids went to bed.

We rounded the corners because, well, toddlers and babies. We also beveled the edges a bit for a more worn and softer look. I painted it with a cream milk paint that had been watered down to act more like a stain than a paint. The kids love this table and wanted to play with it even before we put the trains and tracks in it.

Ordinary coffee table by night, train table extraordinaire by day!

I do have a couple tips that weren’t covered by the plans, which I’ll share here. First, I highly recommend counter-sinking screws. I know a lot of people recommend using a Kreg jig to make pocket holes, but that seemed too complicated for me. You can get a counter-sinking drill bit from Home Depot and pre-drilling the holes really helped prevent the wood from splitting and also ensured that we could fill the holes with wood putty so you can’t see the screws. The latter point was a big one because I used about 115 screws in the table. Remember when I said that I hadn’t done any woodworking since 6th grade? Well, the instructions didn’t say how many screws to use, so I may have overdone it (my husband was super confused when I texted him to say that I had to go back to Home Depot because I ran out of screws).

The kids went nuts over the set up of all their trains!

I had some gapping around the trim. Instead of using wood filler here like we did to cover the screw holes, we used paintable white caulk to fill. It was much easier since we didn’t have to hand sand in the hard to reach areas.

The table is admittedly large: 53″ long, 34 7/8″ wide and 18″ tall. If I had to do it over again, I would have made further modifications to shorten the length, a bit. But, overall, we really love this table. It is easy to hide train tracks and engines inside the table when we want to use the space for entertaining, but just as easy to pull the top off and let the kids play. There is plenty of room inside the table and can house some of our shorter baskets and bins for housing extra tracks, trains and accessories. On the bottom side of the top insert, at some point I want to glue down some lego sheets so that we can reverse the top and use it as both a train table and a lego table. The more functions an object has, the happier I am!

Plenty of space for both kids to play!