DIY Ikea Hacked Trofast Kids Lego/Train Table - Part 1

Idea from http://www.ikeahackers.net/2011/04/trofast-play-table.html


For sometime now my husband and I have eyed off those great kids train / play tables.  Well our 3 year old and 6 year old are completely into Lego at the moment and this is a great way of storing and playing with their Lego at eyesight level for them (if they sit on a chair).

This is the one from Ikeahackers.

So after finding the ikeahackers website by chance, inspiration was found to create our own table and that exact night (DAY 1) at about 8:30pm my husband went in search of the shelves from Ikea!!  In Singapore there are 2 Ikea stores and 1 happens to be 5 mins away from our house!  (That might be a bad thing).  Even though the website said they had them in stock unfortunately there were NONE!  So back home to wait until next shipment (or so we thought).  However next day (DAY 2) on checking with the other store (which happens to be all the way over the other side of Singapore) we found they were in stock - so off he went for shelves and paint!

BUT as usual the adventure did not end there.  LESSON LEARNT - Even if 4 staff in a store say that a type of paint is suitable for a certain job doesn't mean that IT IS!  My husband and kids were almost finished painting the shelves when I ventured out of bed for a few mins to take some photos!  Only to discover that as the paint was drying it did NOT stay on the shelves!  So an hour of painting meant 4 hours plus of removing paint and sanding!  AND not to forget that it meant 2 new tins of paint and not able to return the unopened paint tins either (but they can be used for MDF anyway and another project I will update on later).

Yes I am covered in paint!  But I'm having fun!  Actually they were both really careful about wiping their brushes and not spilling the paint everywhere.  They did a great job!

DAY 3 (today) began with a hunt for MDF.  My husband and 3 year old set off for a street (area) that apparently has MDF and will cut to size for you!  First quote $180 - NO WAY!  Keep looking please!  Finally hubby found little shop willing to do it for $1.50 per cut and approx $21 for MDF!!  WOW - So top and bottom of table and 4 edges for less than $40 all cut to size and ready to paint!!

So afternoon will be spent repainting the storage shelves and painting the MDF.

COST =

Ikea
Trofast wall storage shelves pine x2 = $120
Rill Braked Castor x2 = $24

Paint = $24 a tin (primer & 2 colours) = $72 (we will have leftover to use on another project)
MDF = $35 approx

Extras = Nails, Screws, Sandpaper, Paintbrushes