Be impressed, be Very impressed

Joe and I are very impressed with ourselves. As most of you know, our darling son is very into trains right now. We wanted to give him a train table to play on and decided after looking at all the ones in the store that we could make one. When he saw it for the first time he was very excited and we couldn't part him from it. He was so wired up that I could not get him to nap and he finally fell asleep in his highchair during a late afternoon snack. The table is six feet long and a little over two feet wide. If anyone is interested in making their own train table listen up, here are a few pointers for you:

1) Use only track from one manufacturer. We used track from IKEA and Imaginarium which are supposed to be compatible and found that we had to be really creative to make our design work. We also were forced to buy a lot of extra track to get the intersections and lengths we needed.

2) Figure out what your track layout is before purchasing wood for the base. We initially bought a piece of wood for our base only to find that it wasn't the right dimentions to hold our track. The table should be twice as your toddler can reach, so he can reach the middle from both sides.

3) Buy good quality paint. Made the huge mistake of buying the cheapest acrylic I could find and found to my dismay that it required multiple coats to acheive the color I was working for. It also wouldn't hide the pen lines we used to design the track and board. It was a huge waste of time to try to apply at least two coats of paint to detailed areas.

4) When designing your board and track use only light pencil marks (not a water based pen!). I would only draw the divisions between colors and areas and not the track itself. We were so concerned that we wouldn't be able to remember how the track was supposed to lay out that we traced the whole thing. I then didn't bother to paint where the track was going to go not thinking that if it shifted even a little the bare board would show.

5) Paint the whole board, even where the track will be. Not only will you save time by not having to paint dozens of tiny sections, you won't have bare board showing if your track ends up shifting.

6) Use a paint pen after the colors are down to define the edges. This makes a very clean line and is tons easier than trying to paint them.

7) Protect your paint work and board with multiple coats of polyurethane or polyacrylic following the directions on the can. Be sure to be 100% satisfied with your work before sealing it. We found several small mistakes that we forgot to fix after the project was sealed, now I have to sand it down and repaint and reseal - yuck!

8) Use a power tool, if available, to secure the track in place. Other options are liquid nails or other really strong adhesive. I wouldn't recommend hot glue. We were lucky enough to have a brad gun which made the whole thing really easy.

9) Construct the rest of the table as you would a normal table, excepting that it should be as tall as your childs waist.

Here are a few pictures: