DIY: Rolling Puzzle Table

As has been the norm lately, I found my inspiration for this project on Pinterest.  At first I thought it was a picture of a DIY project but when I went to the link it turns out that the image was from an Ikea catalog.  I wanted to see how much Ikea was selling it for but I couldn't find it on their website.  So I went back to the website where the picture was located and read it.  I learned that Ikea doesn't sell the puzzle table itself but they made the table out of a counter top and wheels they do sell.  I couldn't image that a counter top and wheels from Ikea were any cheaper than going to Home Depot so I decided to make one for myself.

First I had to measure my couch.  I measured the width, the height (very, very important), and the length between the legs (measuring the whole length wouldn't do any good because a rolling table wouldn't fit the whole length because the legs would get in the way).

I also looked at a box for a puzzle we had to find the dimensions to make sure a puzzle would actually fit on the table I was about to build.

I hate going into Home Depot not knowing exactly what I'm looking for so I did some online window shopping first.  This is where I figured out that MDF is pretty cheap (compared to some of the other materials I could have used) and came in a size that would work perfectly: 2ft x 4ft and 1/2 inch in height (when the MDF was laying flat).  I also found that a lot of caster wheels comes in sizes that were way too big so I'd need the smallest size I could find: 1 1/4 inch high.

When I actually went to Home Depot, those were the materials I got: 1 MDF, 4 caster wheels, and one package of screws for a total cost of $24.83 with tax.

Because my MDF was already the perfect size there was no cutting involved but if I had needed to cut it I could have had someone at Home Depot to it.

Once I got everything home I started by painting the MDF with some spray paint I had left over from a previous project.  I just did one coat of paint on each side because I wasn't too worried about it looking perfect.

Then I hopped on over to Mom & Dad's house and borrowed their power drill (or electric screw driver or whatever it was).  It took less than 10 minutes to screw the wheels to the MDF and then I was done.

While borrowing the power tool, Mom brought up a pretty good point.  She wondered how we were going to actually put the puzzle together because the board is low and would sit close to the floor.  I figured we just do the puzzle on the floor but once I got started I realized that I probably shouldn't sit on the floor for that long.  To fix that problem I just placed the puzzle table on top of my coffee table and sat on the couch to put the puzzle together.

I can see how the puzzle would still be too low for some people so I thought in additional to wheels, a ironing board type lift could be added to the underneath of the board to get it higher.