The End of the Cutting Table & The New Parts

If you are a Facebook fan of mine, you know that I recently blew apart my cutting table. This table is one that JoAnn Fabric sells.  We bought mine around 16 years ago.  Back then it cost around $50.  It is a great height for cutting, and it folds and has wheels.  In theory it is great.  In reality, it is wobbly and crooked and not very stable.  It probably doesn't help that it has moved (addresses, not locations in the house) at least 13 times, tipped over a few times, and been heavily used.

We currently have the table in the office.  Every time I need to get into the closet, I have to move the table back and forth to make room.  A few weeks ago, the table decided it had been moved enough.  As I grasped the table leg to move it back into place, the whole thing came right off in my hand.  Luckily my husband happened to be sitting there and quickly moved to hold up that side of the table so that I could move all my things onto the ground so they didn't fall.  What I didn't realize at the time was that he was trying to tell me to clean off the ENTIRE table, not just that side.  Yep, the whole thing was blowing apart. The sad thing is that about a week prior to this, I was telling him that I was going to need a new table soon because the surfaces weren't lining up flat anymore.  Joke's on me, huh?

Here's the table and pieces.  It's bound for the
recycling center this week.  The table usually
has a silver ironing cover on it, but I rescued that
and will attempt to reuse it.

Anyway, after some quick moving and dissolving into a laughing fit, I asked him what we should do.  Obviously I have to have a cutting table.  We looked online at the new JoAnn version.  It's gone up quite a bit in cost since we last bought one and it doesn't look like the quality has gone up with the price.  We decided to take a trip to IKEA to get parts.  Here's what we have so far:

Three white Expedit shelves from Ikea, $40 ea.

59 x 30 birch table top from scratch and dent section, $12.

The table top we purchased was not quite large enough to go over the Expedit shelves, so my husband also made some trim pieces (free from father-in-law's scraps) to go around the top.  I was intending to just use the top and the trim pieces, but he says we need a piece of Formica to go over it all. He has also purchased and painted a piece of plywood for it all to sit on (around $40), and it will have six casters underneath it ($36).  Not quite as reasonably priced as I was hoping, but hopefully this one will last a lifetime.  My job is to pre-assemble the shelves.  I am so far failing miserably.  I don't have the hand strength to use the little tool that comes with them and actually get it tight enough.  Stay tuned for more details.