All right folks: I just kind of had a bit of a brain fart and I wanted to share it with you.
I've been working on this new desk for my daughter to house the new gaming computer
that her dad is building her for Christmas. And this piece right here is one of the shelving
units that's going to function as the legs. It's actually turned upside down right now.
And it occurs to me as I'm staring at this that this would have been a really handy
thing to have when my kids were littler.
Like when they were playing with Legos or crafting, and they had all these little things
that would fall off the sides of the table, and it drove me completely crazy!
Hey! Want to hear my least favorite sound in the whole world?
(Clicking of tiny beads on the floor)
Ughhhh......
And it would only take a little bit of minor
adjustment to turn this into a great Lego or crafting table.
A few notes about supplies if you don't have a good saw in your house, or you don't
feel completely confident with your ability to get straight lines or straight cuts like I do,
then don't fret. Sometimes at your local home improvement store, they might cut things for you to
the size you need, as long as you're not excessive about it.
Officially speaking from places like Home Depot and Lowes,
the rule is that they'll cut the wood to fit into your vehicle.
But where I live, if you go in on a quieter day, and you're really nice to them,
they will sometimes make some more precise cuts for you, within reason.
For this project, you'll need two pieces of plywood cut to the same size
to make your tabletop and a shelf underneath.
Then you'll need some 2 x 2s cut to be trim pieces:
four pieces cut to the long sides, and four pieces cut to the short sides.
And then you'll need four legs cut from the 2 x 2s to whatever height you want your table to be.
Once you've got all your wood cut you can start marking out where you want all of your screws to go.
What I did was lay out all of the pieces on a table,
then marked with a pencil where I wanted all of my pocket holes to go.
I did two in each corner of each piece of plywood,
and then one at each end of each trim piece.
Whenever I'm gluing or screwing pieces of wood, I like to hold them together with various kinds of
clamps that I have here in my workshop. If you're just getting into woodworking and you don't
have any of these yet, invest in some! You really will be glad that you did.
A lot of people don't necessarily have a pocket hole jig laying around,
or they don't know how to use it, in which case you
can just screw the screws in from the side.
You'll need to get longer screws, and I do think that a
pocket hole jig actually holds things a little bit tighter and makes things a little stronger,
but it's not required.
Another perfectly viable option is to get some of these little "L" brackets,
and just pop them into your corners to hold everything together, it's just not as pretty.
When I put my wood together for this project, I attached it like this, so that when I flipped it over,
it would be a nice flat shelf. But all you would have to do is just attach it like that,
so that when you flip it over you've got this nice little inset surface for kids to use crafting
supplies, or Legos, or anything else that might fall off the table and make you absolutely crazy.
Once you've got your table top and your shelf put together, then just attach them to the legs.
And again, if you don't want to use a pocket hole jig, then you can just screw them in from the side.
(tiny beads hitting the floor)
To this day, my kids, whenever they drop something tiny on the floor like that,
they look at me in terror.
Who wants their pocket hole showing right? So....
(laughing)
Ahhhh! So...many...jokes!