Broken Table To Hall Table

Even though I'm known as a fix-it guy, I have to confess - I've had a broken table leaning up on edge in the corner of my shop for nearly a year now. It was one of those fancy small round tables that was big enough to seat 4 people for tea.

One of the legs got broken, I’ve forgotten how... maybe it was one of the kids, maybe it was me, I don’t remember. Anyway, one of the legs got broken in half. I thought about drilling the leg and pinning it with a dowel and glue to keep it together, but I was uneasy about if it would be strong enough or not. 

My second thought was to try and either find or manufacture another leg, but matching it was an issue and manufacturing one that looked like the fancy legs it had seemed like a longer job than I wanted to tackle at the time. So it’s been leaning on end in the corner of my shop taking up space.

My Sweetheart brought me out a sandwich and a cup of coffee yesterday when I was putzing in the shop and she spied the dusty table. “I have an idea of what you can do with that,”  she said and came up with a brilliant solution.

I went right to work on the project and finished it today. What I did was set the table upright with two of the good legs on either side and the third good leg facing the front.  Then I cut the table top right across a few inches behind two of the good legs.  Then I put an extra support across the side I just cut. Voila! An instant hall shelf to put your keys, etc on when you come through the door. A coat of paint and it looked as good as new.

This table was round so even though I cut it in almost in half, I could get it to stand on 3 legs.  You could still fix a square table by just mounting a support to the wall where you want to have the table and support the side without legs on that.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally get that corner of my shop back.

My Sweetheart is not just another pretty face!