Remade: Lego Activity Table

Lego Activity Table

Materials: Vika Amon table top, Trofast storage boxes, EKBY JÄRPEN EKBY TÖRE desk top shelf

Description: After we moved our office from the largest bedroom in the house to a small office space we no longer had room for our two desks, so we choose to build an activity table for our son using one of them.

We decided to use Ikea Trofast storage boxes under the table for storage thinking it would be easy to buy runners for them. Although plastic runners were available a few years ago Ikea no longer sells them. Because of this I ended up having to build my own runners out of timber to get the boxes installed and sliding under the table top.

I started the construction of the activity table by attaching new coffee table legs from Home Depot. They set the table at a good height for my son to kneel and play at the table. Once they were attached I found the middle of the table and proceeded to attach the DIY Trofast runners I had previously built out of timber, starting in the middle and working my way out. I had to be very precise with my measurements here to make sure the boxes wouldn't bind while sliding them in and out. I finished the runners for the boxes by putting a small piece of timber at the back of the runners to stop the boxes from sliding all the way through.

After the main table was finished I then followed the normal Ikea directions to install the desk top shelf and brackets for the Lego display shelf.

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DIY Lego Activity Table with Storage – Ikea Hack

November 16th, 2012 Bill Hutchison · No Comments

Although there are a few commercially available lego tables and activity tables most of them, unless ridiculously expensive, are quite small. Since my eldest son inherited all my Lego collection, plus had some of his own, we wanted a pretty big table, with a substantial amount of storage.

When we had to move out of our large office into a smaller one while we shuffled the kids rooms around before our third was born we no longer had room for both my wife and myself to have desks in the office. That left us with a 150cm x 75cm Ikea Vika Amon table top with no where to use it.

Thus was born my son’s Lego table!

The components used in building this Lego Activity Table were:

• 1 x 150cm x 75cm Ikea Vika Amon table top
• 4 x Ikea Trofast medium size storage boxes
• 4 x Pre-cut coffee table legs and bases from Home Depot
• 2.5m 1″ x 2″ fir timber
• 3m 1″ x 1″ fir timber
• Wood glue
• 1 1/2″ standard nails
• 2 3/4″ wood screws

We also decided to put a display shelf on his activity table, so to do this we got the 119cm wide EKBY JÄRPEN EKBY TÖRE table top shelf. It included the shelf as well as the two desktop mounting brackets to attach them to the activity table top.

Once we chose all the components that we needed for the table the construction was fairly straight forward, with only a few noticeable errors on my part …

To fit four Trofast storage boxes under the Lego activity table the table legs will need to be installed as close to the four corners as possible. This was my first mistake as I initially installed the table legs in the same location that the previous Ikea Vika legs were installed. Woops.

After my initial mistake with the table legs I attached the metal base 2cm inside the outer edge of the table. This gave me enough clearance to fit all four Trofast storage boxes between the legs…

My next step was to build the timber runners for the storage boxes. I choose fir because it was a much harder wood than pine, and hopefully would take a bit more of a beating as well…

I cut five 40cm lengths of the 1×2 and 1×1 timber and then glued and nailed them together to for the runners.

While the glue was trying on the timber runners I found the exact middle on the table top and marked off the location for the centre runner. Once the runners were ready I then glued and screwed the first runner into place.

After attaching the first runner I then proceeded to install the other runners, carefully measuring the distance and making sure that the runners are perfectly square to one another. Unfortunately one of the runners I attached wasn’t exactly right and the storage box wouldn’t slide without getting stuck. Thankfully I found that out before the glue had dried and was able to remove it and try again, but it could have been a real mess had the glue dried.

After all the glue had dried and everything was lined up the four Trofast storage boxes slid in nicely, and then proceeded to fall right out the back of the storage table.

Woops again…

Thankfully I had some of the 1×1 timber left over so I cut four 10cm pieces and glued and screwed them at the back of the runners so that the boxes would stop sliding out the back.

At this point you could paint or stain the table legs to match the table top or other furniture in the room. We choose to leave it raw, mainly because we couldn’t agree on what colour or stain to use on it …

Once that was finished and dried it was as simple as following the direction to install the EKBY JÄRPEN / EKBY TÖRE desk top shelf to finish it off and we were done. One DIY Lego Activity table with storage…