It's time, guys. *Cue dramatic sigh* Time to bid farewell to our trusty reclaimed bowling lane coffee table. We've loved it and lugged it from home to home (It weighs about a gazillion pounds.) and we even hastily childproofed it when Rudy learned to crawl. Nearly three years in our new/old house has taught us a valuable lesson though, and it's never to force our furniture to work in our space if it's just not happening.
One of the reasons I love our reclaimed, vintage and inexpensive furniture is that I rarely feel attached to it. While we loved the coffee table that Corey built from a piece of an old bowling alley and some hairpin legs, it's just too bulky and heavy for our family room. In a room that cries out for storage and furniture with dual functions, it just feels like an odd relic from our lives in the condo.
We've been learning over the past few months that just because something fits in your home, doesn't mean it works in your home. The idea came to me one evening while I was searching online for an inexpensive coffee table with storage. The problem was that after making over our family room (I'll post photos one day soon) any table that fit with our style seemed out of place in the room. Anything I found that magically fit with our decor was inevitably too large for our space. You see, on the other side of our coffee table is Rudy's play space. A deeper table meant less space to play on the floor so we were ideally looking for a shallow coffee table... with some storage space... that wouldn't look silly in our white and rainbow polka dot family room.
I looked at Rudy's Ikea hacked storage desk and in the moment it seemed like the most obvious solution was to just make something ourselves. Duh!
We began by checking out the Ikea website. Since we were already using the Trofast storage system in the room, another Trofast hack would certainly coordinate nicely. We wanted three horizontal compartments, which was only available in a wall mounted model. This wasn't a big deal (We just wouldn't mount it.) but, as is often the case with wall units, it was shallow. At just over eight inches deep, it was way too shallow to work as a coffee table. We decided to buy two and affix them together.
The next problem we encountered was the height. This unit was under a foot tall. We have a low sofa in our family room but we'd still need a little more height. In a moment of genius (If I do say so myself.) I told Corey we'd just add castors. This would also allow us to easily move the coffee table to the side of the room if we ever needed the floor space for tent building or dance parties or Kung Fu!
In addition to the two Trofast units and the castors, Corey bought and cut to size two shelves to add support (and hide the seams) on the top and bottom of the unit, as well as some iron on finishing edging.
Since we know Rudy likes to climb, Corey added an extra set of castors along the seam between the two units for additional support. Note: The additional piece of shelving on the bottom was added after this photo was taken.
We finished it with a mix of bins in different sizes which I'm trying not to fill. In my opinion, if Rudy accumulates enough toys to fill these bins, it's time to fill a big box for charity! For now, this unit will make a good home for the tv remote and maybe a spare phone charger... For now.
Maybe it's not chic West Elm, but the wheels and storage make it perfect for our room. I do like a coffee table that can double as a choo choo train!
