What to do? Efficient furniture to the rescue! Like redesigning the floor plan, designing efficient furniture is great fun. Unlike redesigning the floor plan, it does not involve ripping apart our entire house to turn my projects into reality. Out of this, my newest project was born: a new activity table.
The irony is that I've never actually cared for activity tables. I found they were often too small to function well for trains (what they seem to be predominantly used for) and the big lip around the edge made them uncomfortable to use for more regular table top activities. They are also massive and take up all your floor space. So I needed a table that could be large or small as needed, could be comfortably worked at while still keeping materials on the table, could serve many functions and could be easily removed when floor space was required. Enter the ultimate activity table!
Features:
1) Switchable table tops: The most prominent feature of this table is that it stores a series of table tops. Each top has different surfaces on it (lego surface, road ways, plain top, magnetic white board, felt exc.) that can be used for different functions. You can switch which top is on your table by simply sliding the existing top out and replacing it with a new top. To avoid disturbing larger projects, the front lip of the table is removable (although getting a good mechanism for adhering it has proved a little tricky).
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| Notice the different table tops that can be slid out of the table |
2) Extendable play surface: Max plays lego almost constantly. That means most of the efficiency of our table goes to waste because the lego surface is always being actively used. Fortunately, the many table tops helped to solve this problem. We can extend lower trays out 1/3 of the way providing a smaller table that can hold lego bins, or Darwyn's craft project, while Max works nearby on his lego. This has been the single most useful function of this table in my opinion....and I didn't even anticipate it when I made the original design :)
Update: Max's lego has had to move to the bedroom to keep baby Ada from eating it, so now the table sees a much greater diversity of use.
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| Here is the extended table surface. Max is playing on the lego surface (in the foreground), while Dar builds a city in the background. |
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| Dar playing with road surface table top |
3) Comfortable to work at: Lips on activity tables are nice, but they get in the way of resting your arms against the edge of the table while you work, which makes activity tables not useful for many daily activities (art projects, meals, puzzles exc.). My sister-in-law came to the rescue on this one. Her table was custom built by her father-in-law and they included a low very wide rim that is quite comfortable to rest your arm on. We copied her :)
4) Easily Stored: Activity tables are HUGE. Ours is a little smaller than some, but still quite large. In order to make it possible to get it out of the way, we designed it so that it folds against the wall. Honestly, we haven't used this function much (partly because I only got around to building the shelf that holds the table in the upright position yesterday). The table is in such constant use (and the floor under it in so little demand) that we rarely fold it up. But at parties is could be useful and for a really small home it would definitely be helpful.
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| Activity table in the up right position with a magnetic whiteboard surface |
5) Vertical Play Space: The folding feature had the added bonus of making it function as a vertical play space in addition to a table. We designed it to be two sided, so table tops can be used when it is flipped up against the wall. This allows it to function as a white board or chalk board, an easel, felt board or a magnetic surface (similar to a fridge). I've been hatching schemes for all sorts of toys that could make use of this function, but I've yet to build any. They should make good fodder for Christmases to come though.
6) Sensory Play: The cool thing about this table is that it works as a sensory play table too. The cavity for holding trays is so deep that with nothing but the bottom tray in it makes a pretty good basin. If I were marketing this commercially I would design buckets that slide into the tray lips (ikea trofast style) so that you could store sensory bins with materials in them inside the table, just like you do trays (although the lids would need to be quite secure for when you fold it up against the wall....). I don't have that kind of money, so we just set the sensory bins inside the table when we are playing with them and store them elsewhere the rest of the time.
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| The rice table |
Downsides:
1) Wide table top depth: The most notable drawback of this design is that the trays make the table top very deep. This could be helped, somewhat, by making the table hold only two trays (which still allows four different table surfaces and the extend-ability feature). It think I would do that next time and create adjacent storage for extra trays (built in under the kids bed or something). Of course, if you did this you would lose the sensory play feature to some extent.
2) No long term storage of large projects: This is especially an issue for the lego structures. They can be pretty tall and the head room between trays is 4 inches at maximum. If you want to take out a partly finished lego structure and put in a different top, it can be hard to store it in the table. We've wound up setting the lego tray on the coffee table. This hasn't been too much of an issue for us, since we only usually do this when we are having a party and using the table for the kids to eat at. After meal time, the lego usually goes right back in the table. But if you needed to store it a little more long term, the coffee table wouldn't make the best spot :) I think designing under the bed tray storage (or tray storage in other areas) is the best solution to this as well. You can have much more head room over the tray then, and projects could stay under there for an extended period if need be.
3) Not easily moved: Because it folds against the wall, the table is attached by hinges to the studs. This makes it hard to change your mind on your room layout. The table can be moved of course, but it requires power tools, which is more of an ordeal then moving your average activity table.
Overall:
Overall, I love this table. It gets used constantly. We originally installed it in the kids room and then moved it to the main area because it was so useful. I think if I were living in a truly small space, I would design a whole series of furniture to work with the system. For example, I would make the under the bed storage I talked about and then I would reduce the width of the table to hold only two trays. I would also design the dining table to hold two side by side trays that could be used for adult projects or to extend the dining table when there are guests. And I would design hard to reach over the closet spaces to hold trays for long term project storage. If we eventually move into a truly small home (or renovate ours so we can live only on the main floor), perhaps I will do all these things. Or maybe I will just start a career in furniture design :)
