Kelly Seeks

My youngest son loves trains. LOVES them. So much, in fact, that we joke he knows Thomas the Train well enough to call him Tommy. When my husband was on R & R for his last deployment, we decided we wanted to get a train table for our boys. When we saw how much they cost, we almost fell over. We checked Craig’s List, our local thrift stores, and just couldn’t find what we wanted. That’s when we decided to make our own train table. Couldn’t be that hard, right? (insert snicker here)

Luckily we found a coffee table that could work for a base at one of our local thrift stores. It had storage which was awesome and it was on wheels which was even cooler. After we got the table, we went to home depot and got the rest of our supplies (wood to built an open box on top of the table, screws, wood putty, spray primer, sandpaper, paint and a sealant.

We used pine for the top of the table. We screwed four sides around a piece of pine sheeting and then screwed it to the top of the coffee table.

Then it was time to sand, prime, and paint the whole piece. We filled in the screws with wood putty and sanded them to make it nice and smooth. I followed the directions on this website: http://altard.com/altard/how-to-paint-laminate-particle-board-furniture/

for preparing and painting particle board furniture which was really helpful. We went with three coats of primer followed by two coats of paint to get a nice even finish. I used a spray sealant and it did yellow the paint a bit in some spots which bummed me out, but overall I’m really happy with how it turned out.

We are loving having the storage space underneath, we have train tracks in one, the train cars in the other, and the accessories like bridges, stations, etc… in the third.

For the “scenery”. I just used the acrylic paint from the craft section at Walmart. My hubby painted all the grass, and he looked so cute doing it! :).

Overall we spent a little under $100 for the whole project. Did we save tons and tons of money when it was all said and done? Maybe not tons, but we have some great memories!