more than meets the eye

Exciting news at The Caboose (a.k.a pint-sized house)! We have a transforming coffee/dining table! No more eating on trays while sitting on the couch. We’ve been lucky to have some good enough weather to use our balcony in the meantime, but boy is it nice to have a place to put things when we sit inside now.

We commissioned our friend and designer, Dave Myers to build us a custom convertible coffee/dining table a few weeks ago. It’s our very own little transformer (except that it’s manual, not automatic.) This proved to be an ambitious project, since nothing had been done quite like it before. Inspiration was drawn from a few designs that we’d come across while researching, but all in all it is definitely one-of-a-kind.

Since the space between the couch and the ‘traffic path’ to and from the stairs  is quite narrow, we needed something that would fit in nicely when coffee table height, but be able to expand to be wider for dining with friends when raised.

The result fits in perfectly with our decor and space. The image below shows it at both coffee table and dining height:

To lift the table, it’s easiest with two people. Each person lifts an end and the legs swing out on hinges from the folded position on the ground shown in the top photo, to the longer upside-down L-shaped extension you see in the bottom photo.

Dave used solid alder for the legs to match the other wood in our cabinetry, and beech plywood for the top, which we decided to paint white to match the walls, and break up the wood tones in the room a little bit.  He also created custom hardware  including metal gusset plates for the legs, and 2 custom tabletop lifts mechanisms, one for each draw leaf. The leaves can be opened independently, and the legs move with them to provide a larger footprint for more stability. It’s pretty clever! We’re really happy to have such a unique item in our small abode.

I’m going to be buying some foam to make a cushion that’s level with the top of the couch seat, and covering it with left over upholstery fabric from the couch and throw pillows pictured so we can put it on top of the table (secured with Velcro on the underside of the table top) and use it as more of an ottoman sometimes, or even push it up against the edge of the couch to extend the seat to be more lounge-y.

Well, that is our creative way of dealing with a multi-use area in our small space. Thanks to Dave for all his work and problem solving during the process! If you’re looking for someone to make you cool stuff like this, give me a shout and I’ll put you in touch!

That’s all for now – next time expect a report on our past week of harvesting and processing 30 Ibs of U-Pick strawberries! Mmmm.

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