Upcycling a table into some shelves

June 10, 2024

When we bought the new house in Suffolk, the previous owners had left us some old furniture in the garage. One of these was a folding table, it wasn’t in terrible condition but it did have old brown varnish and some random paint on it. So it would have been a big job to make it fit for donation or use, so I thought I would strip it for parts.

The first thing I did was to take off all the hinges, these did look quite nice in place but when I took them off they were quite flimsy and most of them were a bit bent and rusty. I kept the best of them for a future project. The screws didn’t seem worth keeping they were just steel ones and mostly corroded. It was interesting that note how a groove had been cut for the hinge pin so that the hinge was flush to the table, thanks to Alfred for his thoughts on the method of creation.

It looks like a nicely radiused groove that a moulding cutter would produce.

Alfred Maker of Things

Once I had a pile of wood, I had to choose which bits would be the shelves and I decided that the curved sides of would be best. So it was a simple case of sawing a straight line across the table which I did with a hand saw. Again the construction was interesting to note as these were block board with a thick veneer. So ideal for shelving as it should remain stable.

Cleaning up the planks was a bit messy as the old brown varnish needed removing along with the other paint and marks. An 80 grit sandpaper made fairly swift work of this and then I cleaned it off with some low emission white spirit replacement.

The final assembly was to give it a coat of wax and to screw the brackets to the wall.

Not sure what I’ll do with the other parts but the centre of the table will likely be used a saw horse with the boards of various sized being used for more shelves or boxes etc.

By Andy from Workshopshed Add Comment

  Posted in: Recycling Tags: Shelving, upcycle