Hands On with Amy Devers: Build a Very Versatile Table

12/14/2010

Dear Amy,

I have a pretty small kitchen. I’d like to create some sort of drop-leaf table dealie along the wall. I saw your post on attaching legs to reclaimed wood to make two nightstands, so I gotcha on that. But how do I make something that I know will be sturdy and possibly attached to the wall? Thank you!

This is a great question! I know you’re interested in your kitchen, but I want everyone who reads this to know that this is applicable to any space where you may want a work surface that folds down: A desk for a home office that doubles as a guest bedroom? A potting table in the garage? A DJ set-up in the living room? A sewing table in the ?? A money-counting and drug-weighing table in the den? (Just kidding, unless you’re a dealer.) You can even put a small one in a closet, as a make-shift tea-party-between-the-coats area for kids, or an extra “sometime” shelf. The options are endless, but the solution is easy.

IKEA makes a super cheap, pretty generic looking NORBO table which could be just the ticket. It’s utilitarian and unoffensive, but oh-so bland. If you’d like to express a bit more flavor (and I think you would) you can make your own top out of plywood, MDF, Kirei, or salvaged wood or (my favorite option) find your perfect table-top second-hand—vintage, thrift, roadside, inherited, hot—whatevs. Yes, get the guy that’s just the right size, that has all the story-telling battle scars, that may even have some fancy (or schmancy) detail that would be too difficult to recreate, or the one that is so cheap it’s cheaper than raw material but you can collage/paint it just so. Don’t worry about the legs, they’re adios. The point is that this will be affixed to your wall, it should be art. (Or it should completely disappear into the background, like a phantom chameleon.)

With these folding brackets all you need to do is mount them to the wall studs (make sure they’re level if you don’t want your grapes to roll off the table) and then attach your table top with the appropriate screws. (I love inappropriate screws sometimes, but not in this case.) The key to sturdiness is anchoring the brackets into the wall studs which you can accomplish easily with a stud finder and #10 x 2 1/2” pan head screws . Cake!