Lego Table

Remember two and a half years ago, when I decided to make a lego table? And then it took me another year to acquire a flat file for the project? Well, I finally decided that I'm finished with the lego table. It turned out to be a lot simpler than I imagined. But it works like I hoped!

So, I'm calling it good and done. It's basically lockable casters on the bottom of a flat file. (Wheels/casters here.) Flat files are large, shallow drawers that were traditionally used for sets of architecture and engineering drawings. These days, many drawings are being stored digitally. Firms have cut back on the number of flat files they have. You can frequently find flat files for sale on Craigslist. (Wood flat files are less common than metal flat files; which is why it took a while for me to find these.)

Flat file drawers are perfect for holding legos because of how shallow they are. None of the pieces get  buried like they would in deep drawers or bins. I had planned to make the top a rimmed table top. The rim was going to be on 3 sides of the table top. I thought the rim would "hold" the legos on the top, but still allow the kids to sweep the legos into the drawers when they were done playing.

After about a year and a half of playing on it without the rim, I finally admitted that maybe it wasn't really necessary.

I did have to make some reinforcements. Originally, there was some type of cheap masonite on the backside. The kids would slam the drawers closed. Eventually, they broke the drawers (you can see the missing corners on the drawers in the first image above) and pushed off the masonite board. Then it sort of looked like this from the backside:

I hastily added some boards on the back to be supports/drawers stops at the edge. You have to look carefully to notice them, but they look and work a lot better than the masonite board:

While our house was under construction last spring, we used the lego table as our coffee table. It doubled well.

(Uck! Feels so cluttered! I am so glad we are no longer under construction. Just digging out the above photo is giving me unpleasant flashbacks.)

These days the lego table is back in Mattias's bedroom, but still getting lots of use. In fact, it is in such constant disarray from use that I had to wait for the boys to be back in school in order to take photos with the drawers closed.

Oh! And! Fritz had an old bookshelf that fit CDs and old VHS tapes. But all of our CDs have been transferred to digital files; VHS we no longer watch. So I removed the back of the bookshelf and hung it on the wall to store lego creations in progress. It might look a little funny; an acceptable trade off for fast and free: