Lego Play Table (with Interchangeable Baseplates) - Updated

My two boys love to play with Lego and therefore their room is always a mess with Lego builds and loose parts scattered all over the floor. I think those of you who have kids know that feeling all to well, when stepping on a Lego brick without shoes on...

So I decided it was time to change something. A while before they found a ready made Lego playtable in a catalog, but it was pretty small, low and a very bulky design. I talked them out of it and in my head a plan began to develop of building my own version of a Lego playtable.

I started searching on the interwebs for ideas and inspiration and stumbled onto this design. A simple table with partial baseplates glued around the edges so that you could exchange the middle plates without any problem. That was the way to go!

In the basement I had stashed away an old Ikea tabletop (I don't remember the name and it's not in stock/production anymore). I bought this years ago and it has seen a fair share of (ab)use as a desk, crafttable and later as fleamarket stand and it was a bit beat up.

I also had a set of adjustable Ikea legs (got them for free a few years ago) that came in handy. I even found enough matching screws in my Ikea hardware assortment (never throw away Ikea hardware) to fix the baseplates to the tabletop.

A few months ago I had bought two cans of black chalkboard paint for no other reason than that they were cheap.

Online I found enough (non-lego) baseplates for a reasonably low price so that it wouldn't hurt to cut some of them to the necessary size.

A cartridge of mounting adhesive from the local diy store and I was set up to start building.

As for tools I didn't need a lot:

• screwdriver
• carpetknife with snap-off blade
• basic painting equipment
• cartridge press
• clamps and a few slats
• sanding paper

First order of business was measuring the table and calculating the amount of basic 32x32 studs baseplates I needed. The table is 75x195 cm, the standard plates measure 25,5x25,5 cm.

It came out that I could fit 14 plates along the center and needed another 10 to create the border around the edge.

For the border I settled for green ones. For the middle I bought a mix of light grey, sand, blue and white. My kids will exchange them anyway and this seemed to be a reasonable basic assortment.

With the table top propped up on two wooden trestles I painted the bottom side first with about two coats of black and also gave the edges a first black coat. After letting it dry over night I screwed on the baseplates for the legs and the legs itself and continued on the top side. I gave it about four layers of chalkboard paint. I think that should do the trick. If you ask, why chalkboard paint, first of all it was what I had on hand and second like this the boys can use chalk to paint and draw their own "landscapes" in the middle section if they want to.

To find out to what size I needed to cut the outer plates I assembled the middle plates together with some flat brick strips. Then I added a few green plates to the edges (I did the shorter edge first) an marked the cut lines with more flat lego strips.

Now I could easily cut them to size running a sharp carpet knife along the strips. Just run the knife about four or five times over the plastic and then you can snap the part off by bending it a little back and forth.

With all four edges done, I did the same for the corner pieces.

As I had all needed pieces cut, I sanded the sharpish cut edges smooth with some 180 grit sandpaper. I also rounded down all (new) corners and sanded the outside corners of the cornerplates a bit further down than the others so they don't stick out when clued down later.

Finally I sanded all the bottom sides of the green plates with 40 grit sandpaper to give the glue a bit more surface space to grip on.

I might use the leftover to ad strips alongside the edge of the table. But we will see...

With the paint all cured it was time to get the baseplates glued onto the table. So I placed all plates back on the table and joined them together with several strips of Lego. Do not skip this step as it is important. If you don't do this it will get difficult to build across the borders of the baseplates. Also when arranging the cut pieces, make sure to use the original edge towards the inside.

Forget about all the striked out part (I'll just leave it here to document my mistake) and skip to step 6...

I started with clamping down the middle of the assembled plates with the help of two slats (coming from a Ikea Kura bed) to avoid movement while glueing everything down. After I applied glue and clamped down the first plates I all of a sudden realized that the clamping made all the pieces move (they were kind of "swimming away" on the glue). So clamping the middle wasn't a good idea as it created a kind of a pivot point. So now I clamped down firmly the complete opposite edge while I was working on one side. That did the trick.

Good thing is that the mounting adhesive doesn't need a long pressing time. I just needs a high amount of even pressure for a short time and then about 24h of curing time. Like this I could quickly release the clamps and move on to the next part. To distribute the clamping pressure as even as possible I used some Ikea Kura slats I had left from another project.

And after I was done, I just had to play around a bit with the middle plates... ;-)

On christmas eve, when I revealed to the kids what I had been building in the basement the days before (my top secret project), they were blown away. They very quickly transferred all their house builds from the floor to the table.

The first picture is about 5 minutes after they first saw the table and the the last two are around three hours later (with dinner inbetween)...

After a while my kids realized that the plates in the middle started to bulge up, when building on the full surface of the table. Somehow during the final curing of the glue, the plates must have moved inwards as they were fine when I handed over the table.

So I ripped off the outer plates and cleaned the table surface and backside of the plates from the glue remnants. I didn't bother to repaint. To stick them down this time I used extra strong double sided tape. I layed down all the tape around the table, placed all plates on the table and fixed them to each other. Next I checked that the whole thing was centered.

I started off by sticking down the short edges and then moved on to the longer edges. Done!

Mistake corrected and kids are happy and building again...

This build was started three days before Christmas 2022 and finished just in time to let the glue cure for 24h before "handover", so there was not much time on hand for extra additions. With more time on hand there are a few possible future improvements I can think of:

• Adding drawers for Lego underneath the table with some L-shaped railings and Ikea Trofast boxes (that one is probably coming pretty soon)
• Adding the leftover strips alongside the edge of the table to add the possibility to build horizontally (have to ask the boys if the want/need this)
• Converting it to a hanging table, that could be pulled up to free floor space when not in use
• Adding different legs with casters to make it movable

I'll keep you posted...