Children's Outdoor Play Table

Learn how to build an outdoor activity table, using scrap materials from around the house. In all this project took approximately and 1 hour.

First you need to assemble your materials. For this project I had, a daughter wanting to make mud on the deck, 4 - 16" 4x4s and a 2' x 4' sheet of plywood, leftover from an earlier project.

Materials
1. Restless child looking for something to do
2. 4 (4 x 4) blocks
3. 1 Sheet of plywood
4. Deck screws
5. Drill
6. Counter sink + deck screw bit
7. Sander

Optional

Speed Square (This made making the corner lines easy)

For this step my helper and I used a speed square to mark where the legs were going to go.

We created lines that were 3" from the sides to form a corner. This step was repeated for all corners.

Not to overstate the obvious, but this made it easy to find the legs when I drilled down from the top.

Next position the legs under the table. I made matching marks on both sides of the table top.

All I had to do was, position the legs in the marks on the bottom of the table top.

With the legs positioned properly, I counter sank two deck screws into each leg.

This is what it looked like after all the legs were screwed in.

To minimize any discomfort I sanded the corners and edges down.

Kids and splinter do not mix well.

From here there are a few thing you can do to finish it out.

1. Sand it down again and add a chalk paint top
2. Paint it so it fits in with the backyard more (camo to hide it from the wife)
3. Edging to stop run away crayons and such.


I'm not sure how strong this table is, but two of my three were able to stand on it with out the table shaking. To strengthen it a bit I might add some 1 x 4s for cross leg support and stability.