Kitchen Table to Kids’ Table

We moved last August and since the move, I’ve never taken the time to get my combined office and craft really functional. It had too much furniture in it, and needed more shelving. Last Friday, I had enough and started changing it all up. I was going to post about the progress I’ve made in that room, but instead decided to focus this post on the first thing I changed, which actually involved a table that I moved OUT of the room. Moving the table out and freeing up that corner of my office was the first step and it made a huge impact in my room. And I was so excited about how it turned out that it motivated me to keep working on the rest of my office.

In our old house, we had a pretty generic kitchen table with the natural wood top and white painted legs (similar to this). I bought the table shortly after graduating from college for cheap at a discount furniture store, but it worked, and it actually looked pretty nice in our last two houses. But the new kitchen has darker wood floors and cream colored wood trim, so the table was just NOT going to work anymore as our kitchen table. So I had the movers put it in my office/craft room, thinking I could work on craft projects with my daughter there. But that never happened, as she preferred to work in her playroom. So the table just took up a lot of space in my office and junk got piled on it. I also realized Andrea was outgrowing her little kiddie table that Santa brought when she was just 2. Brainstorm! I realized I could cut the legs down and move it into her playroom. It’s got a lot more real estate than her kiddie table, which is never big enough for her sprawling arts and crafts projects these days. The only problem was that I didn’t like the idea that if I cut all the legs, I couldn’t easily put it back to its original state again. So I went to Home Depot and looked for replacement table legs, but they were pricey and would have cost over $60, which was more than I wanted to spend. But then I found some primed square balusters for only $9 and they were long enough (42″) that I could buy two and cut them in half to make shorter legs for the table. So I brought them home, pulled out the circular saw and cut them in half. Then I took the legs off the old table, lined up the new legs, marked and drilled holes in them, and then screwed them in to the table similar to how the original legs attached.

Here’s the final result:

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My daughter LOVES it. She has so much space for her projects now and there’s room for her bins of markers, and crayons, and colored pencils to be on the table with her while she works. The table is also a little bit taller than her previous table, so she won’t outgrow it anytime soon, and it’s a little easier for me to sit with her so we can do projects together. Success!!!

The office/craft room is coming along quite nicely, but I will have to post about that later this week.

I’m linking this up to the weekly One Project at a Time link party hosted by A Bowl Full of Lemons!

Thanks for reading my blog. Time to take on the rest of my day!

2 thoughts on “Kitchen Table to Kids’ Table”

    • They are the IKEA Trofast system. We tried the popular IKEA Expedit shelving unit in her playroom at the old house, but it wasn’t very functional for a lot of her stuff. The cubbies were too big and she would never put the bins back in the unit. But with the drawers, everything seems a lot easier for her and it’s been working pretty well. I still need to label them, but already it’s made a huge difference. It’s so much easier for her to clean up her playroom now. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they have any IKEA stores near you now, but one is slated to open in the Kansas City area next year.

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