Design Sponge posted recently about tray tables and I was admiring how practical and useful tray tables are. Then I remembered – I have a tray table – that I made.  It’s the coffee table in our living room and the table base part used to be a bench.  I don’t have the part that made it a bench any longer.  I removed the seat part because it was tufted orange velour and rather than a horizontal bench it was in a curved shape.  Flattened out, it probably stretched to 60 inches long and no, I’m not making this up.  It was so ugly but the base had pretty legs and that’s the part I needed to make a coffee table.

Coffee Table Tale

The top of the table is plywood that I cut to fit the table base and more importantly cut so that my tray could sit on the table.  Done!  My very own tray table.  My tray table doubles as a card game table with the tray removed.  Yes, poker with pennies.

I added the casters because I like things on wheels.  It helps in a small living room to be able to roll your coffee table out of the way for hula hooping, yoga mats or sleepovers – all of which are happening regularly in our living room.  Only 3 of the 4 casters match but that’s ok.  No one has noticed yet.

Then I used Wonder-Under Fuser to attach fabric to the plywood.  I wanted to pretty up the plywood.

Then I added this little table skirt.  It’s a rectangular table throw that is lined and I added piping.  I used fabric glue to keep the corners in those neat little pleat formations.  Yes, another slip-cover!

My tray table cost less than $10 including the non-matching casters which I found at Hippo Hardware, one of my favorite haunts.  The plywood was a scrap from another project and was collecting dust in the garage.  The tray I picked up years ago and it has a large crack in the bottom but it still works.

Related Links:

Decorating with tables
Just slip-cover it!
How to make a house home
Working with vinyl fuser