Thursday, August 5, 2010

TrainTableTop

As I promised in yesterdays Birthday Stuff post - here's the gift I "built" my son last week :)

When my son turned two we got him a train table for his Birthday.
It was a huge hit.
But he was definitely too little to set up the tracks himself, and I didn't want to be doing it for him every 5 minutes...
So we took a cue from the toy store and screwed the pieces on to the table.
It worked out perfectly...except he just turned 4, and now he wants the freedom to move the tracks around. Plus, it would be nice if he could use the table for other things as well - like legos or race cars.

The old table top has screw holes in it now, though. Plus the wear and tear on it was pretty significant.
So I decided to replace the top :)

I picked up a very thin piece of plywood - a 4x4 piece of flooring underlayment, actually.
I cut it down myself with a circular saw. I'd never done that before. In the past, my handy-dandy, oh-so-helpful husband has always done it for me. But he was at work, and I'm impatient, and I decided to do it myself. It's a lot harder than it looks.
But I managed!





Then I gave it a coat of apple green spray paint.

When that was dry I started the detail work.
I'm no artist, but I figured my 4 year old wasn't going to be critiquing my work. I gave it a couple of bodies of water, a bunch of rocks, some trees/bushes and a road, of course.

After the detailing was finished I gave it a clear top coat to keep the paint from wearing away too quickly.

For his Birthday this year, we gave Ash a bunch of Hot Wheels race tracks that interconnect. The new train table is the perfect place to set them up! It's wonderful being able to use the table for more than just trains. Here are my kiddos, in their jammies, playing on the new table :)

1 comment:

MeenyMoe said...

I love what you did to re-do the train table! My son got a large Thomas the Tank set of trains and tracks for his 4th birthday. He's now 12 and that same train set has went through many neighbor kids and family and now my granddaughter plays with it. I wish we had a train table to put it on instead of the floor! Great job!

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