Around the Table

I visited a chiropractor this past week.  It all started over the weekend with looking out Number Two Son’s window to see how bad the porch roof is.   I really needed to replace it this summer but of course I was a working on van projects.  Or, I was traveling in the van and having a good time.  Either way the porch roof didn’t get replaced.  I think my back went into pre-project sympathy spasms or something just thinking about all those rolls of half-lap shingles I would have to carry up a ladder.  I have been down and out for a week.  I tell you what, being 70 inches tall, living in a room with fifty inch ceilings, having lower back pain …sucks.  I didn’t tell the chiro how I am living.   I didn’t want him saying “…and he wonders why he has back problems, what an idiot.”  Today is the first day I would consider myself sorta cured of this bout.   There have been some rough, ice pick to the kidney, days though.

This is the second installment of a two part story about building a table for the van.  I didn’t mean to ramble on so, but the fact is, just like a family home the table is the center of all activity.   Eating, talking, drinking and work all happen here in this spot.  It needs to be big enough to do everything it needs to, but with so little space I can’t afford to waste any of it.  

Version one as it is folded up against the wall.
The gap behind the table doesn't look like
much in this photo but in context of van
space in real life it was huge.

The design I settled on was one thought of by The Wife.  It would have the ability to fold up against the wall, rather than down like my original design and everything I had seen before.  The legs would fold in against it.  And, because it folded up not down, it could actually overhang the bed slightly making a more comfortable table-chair relationship using the bed as a seat for working and eating. So this is the idea I started with as I built VAN_TABLE_VERSION_1.0.0.  The beta version.  —Can you tell work in IT?  :-)   

It was funny.  Back a couple of months ago when I first built the bed platform I did some estimates of how high the table needed to be off the floor.  I sat on some pillows, did some estimates.  I came up with 26 inches.  That’s what I used in my initial drawings and plans.   Then, once I had the mattress in place, forgetting all about the fact that I had already done this, I cut out a cardboard sheet to resemble the tabletop and made a mockup without measuring, I just set the height which was comfortable and measured after the fact.   When  I was all done and drafted it up I found my original plans.  The answer had come up exactly 26 inches both times!  Wow, I guess that is what it was meant to be!

Hinges on the backs of the legs allow
them to fold tight against the table.

Building this beta version of the table I cut the legs out of a 2x4 I ripped in half.  I just used a couple of scraps of plywood between the legs to hold them about ten inches apart.   The tabletop I cut out of the left over scrap from the plywood I used building the floor to ceiling shelf.  It wasn’t a perfect piece, it had a notch cut out of one side left when I cut out some reinforcement ribs building the shelf.   All I really wanted was something to use as a test to see if this design would work.

Initially I just cut the tabletop square.  But again, this table wasn’t really as long as I wanted it.  I made it as long as I could, figuring it would almost brush the ceiling in the up position.  But folded up, this put it on the outside of the frame.  In this position it stuck out into the room maybe four inches plus the thickness of the legs.   Far more than I had expected.  It was a good start, but it was really sub-optimal.   Here is where you have to start a game of balance.   You have to decide what is really important.  To me, the table sticking into the room so much when it was supposed to be in the folded up and out of the way position was a real problem.   

This is just a mockup so
it doesn't have to be perfect.

The only solution I could see to that problem was to cut the table shorter, so it would fit under the frame.  Shorter, it would nestle closer to the wall and take up less space.   But balance!  It was already too short!  So for the next few weeks I was caught up in this struggle.  No closer to any answer.  I did cut the table shorter.  I even cut an oversized rounded corner so it could really hug in tight.  Sure, that part of it was nice.  But the short table left me sitting very close to the outer wall when I wanted to type or eat.  I knew once I had the trim on in the upper corner of the fan I might have head clearance issues.  

WhatI really felt I needed was …as crazy as this sounds, a leaf or two for my table.   Having leaves would allow me to stretch my table out if I wanted it bigger.  I started looking into just what it would take to design something like this.  The only way I had seen something like this done was my kitchen table at home.  You get someone on each end of the table and pull it apart.  Drop the board into the middle.   To engineer something like this in my van though seemed beyond my abilities.   To make it strong, the wood is going to be heavy.  

Clamping the quarter inch
rim in place around the
table edge.

I found a company where I could buy aluminum runners instead but they made them for kitchens with real kitchen table sized tables and leaves wider than my whole table.  To buy from them I would need, you guessed it, cu$tom $ize$. But say I did do it.  If I spent the money.  Likely 90% of the time I wouldn’t be using the leaves, I would have them out.  I would have to store in the van two 6”x26” table leaves.  Where am I going to do that?   It doesn’t seem like much but they would be cumbersome and I don’t have extra space.  I had to give this idea up.  More time passed. 

Here’s where I discover it takes a community to raise a van.

Number One Son’s good friend wanted to stop over and see my project.  He had been hearing about it for months but the timing never really worked out that he was around when I was.  He is a sharp kid.   Literally brimming, chock full of ideas.   Genius, illegal, immoral, profitable and impossibly not, all those ideas are in there.   Over the years I have know him I have had a great time listening to them all spill out in his youthful enthusiasm.  Helping him sort them into those categories.  I explained to him my dilemma and he had an idea immediately. 

The leaf as it folds down into position.

In fact he gave me two ideas the day of his visit.  I will cover the second one in a few weeks as it pertains to a later project.  For my table what he suggested for the table is to build it with a double top.   The upper layer of the top would be split and hinged on the side next to the wall and on the outside end.   The normal position would be to have the two layers stacked, forming a double thick tabletop. But here is the genius, to extend the table would be a simple matter of folding up the one piece against the wall.  Then fold the other piece out into the room.  In effect the table would have built in, self storing, leaves.   Sweet!  Two days later I had built Beta Version Two.

Since I had spent a bunch of time hacking on the first version to get it to fit tight to the wall, I decided to scrap it and start over.  I had another hunk of plywood and cut it 24”x26” to form the tabletop.  Initially my plan was to make the upper tabletop the same way using 3/4 plywood.  That didn’t really work because the hinges needed something thicker.  I cut the top to size, then to increase the thickness I added a 3” rim of some quarter inch scrap to make the top roughly one inch thick.  It didn’t have to be pretty, this is just a mock up.   

The leaf supports in the swung out position.  In the final
design these should change to longer, thinner, slide outs.

The final design will have to incorporate some supports underneath the leaf.  I envision maybe some slide out 3/8” oak strips.  But for now what I did was just use a couple of drywall screws to hold two little hunks of scrap plywood.  When the leaf is not folded out, these scraps can be rotated out of the way.

After building this design, one issue I discovered is the exposed hinge on the outside edge isn’t very attractive.   Additionally the edges are quite sharp.  To counter this what I will plan to do in the final version is to make this hinge a little shorter.  Then I will cut a thin strip (~3/8-1/2”) of some attractive wood, paddock perhaps, cut a groove on the inside to cover the hinge.  I will mount some magnets to this strip and it will stick to the hinge.

This design is an amazing improvement on the original.  It answers everything I need.  Having a table small, yet large, folding up and out of the way when not needed but being the center of all activity when it is down.   When the leaf is out, amazingly I could likely seat four (really good friends) around a table of this size.   I love it!