Re-sizing the Breakfast Table

A long time ago, Sheena and I bought a pretty cheap, counter height breakfast table.

This was before we had kids and it was when we moved into our second house.  It fit our needs at the time and we really enjoyed it.  Now that we’re in our new house and we have 2 kids that like to climb things, a counter height table just didn’t fit our needs/wants.  Also, I had to do a ghetto fix shortly after I bought the table because it was cheap and got weak after some guests had leaned on the table top.  I added some “L” brackets to bring additional support on the connection between the leg and the base plate.

Just for a frame of reference, the “Table Top Plate” is attached to the table top.  The “Base Plate” is attached to the Leg.  When disassembling the table, you simple unscrew the base plate from the table top plate and it becomes 2 easily portable pieces.

The first step was to disassemble and bring the leg and base plate to the garage.  I then took the base plate off the leg.

I used our dining table as a height reference for the breakfast table.

I transferred that measurement to the breakfast table leg and chopped it up.

I needed to attach the base plate back to the leg, but the old base plate was made of particle board and very weak.  I had some scrap solid wood, so I made a new, stronger base plate.

I clamped the old base plate to the new base plate so that I could transfer the holes allocated for the screws that’ll eventually attach to the table top plate.

Then I placed the leg on top of the new base plate. I lined up the “L” brackets and drilled a few pilot holes.

Then I flipped it back over to drill the pilot holes into the leg.  The “L” Brackets were then simply screwed on by hand.

Then it was a matter of attaching the leg to the table top.  I just lined up the holes on the new base plate to the holes found on the table top plate and screwed ’em in.  Ezzy helped.

I couldn’t have a table-height table with counter-height chairs…

…so I chopped the legs on one of the chairs using the measurements of another chair we have.

I brought it inside for a test.  It felt comfortable, so I chopped up the rest of ’em.

Here’s the final product.

I’m really happy with the final product.  It’s way safer for Layla to climb on and I find it more comfortable than a counter height table.  Sheena and I were considering buying a new one anyway, so it was worth it for me to just do the experiment.  If it didn’t work out, we would get rid of it anyway to buy and new one, but now that it actually did work out, we can use this one (and let the kids continue to ruin it) and just buy a nicer one when the kids stop spilling food/drinks/markers on the seats.