writ­ten 10/9/23, updat­ed 10/9/23

What: A DIY fold­away craft table attached to an exist­ing book­shelf

Why: I have a very small space to work in. This way, when I need it, I have a flat sur­face to do craft things (sewing machine, cut­ter, draw­ing, small t‑shirt press, etc), and when I don’t, I can just fold it down. No need for a sep­a­rate fold­ing card table, plus pre­serv­ing shelf space

Sup­plies: Wood, Cir­cu­lar Saw, Wood Clamps, Work­table, Router, Paint, Paint Sup­plies, Sander, Screws, Hinges, Folding/Extendable Table Legs, Drill, Drill Bits, Screw­driv­er, Tape, Per­ma­nent Mark­er, Stud Find­er, Mea­sur­ing Tape, Ruler, Safe­ty Equip­ment

Cost: $240.21 (all oth­er sup­plies already owned)

Item	Price
3/4in x 2ft x 4ft Maple Ply­wood	$39.99
#12 Flat Under­cut Screw Philips 1/2in length (25pk)	$7.84
Dia­blo 7–1/4″ 40 Tooth Fin­ish­ing Saw Blade, Dia­mond Knock­out	$16.24
Stain­less Steel Fold­ing, Tele­scop­ing Desk Legs, 35.4″ length w/screws (x2)	$75.98
Reli­a­bilt Black 6in Strap Hinge (x2)	$9.56
6‑tier Open Book­case 9.3“D x 23.6“W x 70.9“H	$79.99
8oz Behr Dynasty Inte­ri­or Paint Sam­ple Size	$4.68
Ever­bilt Self Adhe­sive Felt Strip	$5.93
Total	$240.21

Com­plex­i­ty: Easy to Mod­er­ate (fig­ur­ing out the hinge sit­u­a­tion was the biggest headache)

Time: 2–3 week­ends (1 day + a week to dry paint, 2ish week­ends to gath­er mate­ri­als, measure/calculate, and do it)

Reference Images

Process

I had to buy a book­case to fit a very small, spe­cif­ic space right next to the clos­et so that the clos­et door could still open, mean­ing that the shelf has to be rather shal­low. Because the shelf isn’t very expen­sive, though, the shelves’ thick­ness­es are thin and that has to be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion.

Wood

I chose Maple Ply­wood. Was think­ing about MDF, but it was too flim­sy, too heavy, and too dif­fi­cult to uti­lize hard­ware with.

Once the piece of wood is obtained, per­form mea­sure­ments and cal­cu­la­tions, mark them, and pre­pare a work­space to make nec­es­sary cuts. Make sure to avoid knots!

Learned that not all saw blades are cre­at­ed equal. Used a fin­ish­ing blade on the cir­cu­lar saw for a smooth cut through the ply­wood. Taped off the edge to pre­vent splin­ter­ing, and then set up a jig to con­trol the cut line. To do that, use anoth­er, straight piece of wood clamped to the work­table where the cir­cu­lar saw guide will glide against.

Left: work set­up, Mid­dle: jig and taped off cut line, Right: Cut!!!

Test­ed the new­ly cut piece, found that it was still too long, mea­sured again, and back to cut­ting! Same set­up: tape, jig/guide.

Handle

After por­ing over lots of hard­ware, I did­n’t like any of the offer­ings and they were sur­pris­ing­ly expen­sive, plus I only have ³⁄₄″ thick­ness to work with. Then some­one rec­om­mend­ed just cut­ting out a hole as a han­dle. What a great idea, and it does­n’t cost any­thing because I already have a router (no jig­saw, which would have been even eas­i­er)!

Decid­ed to use drill bits (step­ping up sizes in suc­ces­sion to make the holes larg­er and bits eas­i­er to con­trol), then spade bits (just be sure not to use too large of a spade bit. I did that and messed up the cut, hence the weird mis­take on the mid­dle hole. Should have just stuck with the ⁵⁄₈ which made a hole bit enough to fit the router bit). Strong rec­om­men­da­tion to mark on the UNDERSIDE of the wood. Thank good­ness my spade bit boo­boo only affect­ed the under­side

Just try­ing to both remove some struc­ture and widen the holes enough to allow the router in

When work­ing with routers, BE SURE that the bit is ALL THE WAY IN. Mine kept fling­ing out because I did­n’t make sure of that (actu­al­ly, I sim­ply for­got how to use it). Super dan­ger­ous! I high­ly rec­om­mend using a guide/jig for the router if you don’t have a router table.

Left: router bit all the way in; Cen­ter: jig for the router; Right: Almost done!

Paint

Ugh. I hate paint­ing so much!

Rec­om­mend­ed sup­plies: mini roller, roller tray, tow­els, tack cloth, sand­ing discs, sander, bench pucks (to ele­vate).

When con­sid­er­ing paint, I want­ed to be sure that it would be able to with­stand some wear and tear, so I went with a nice paint. The sam­ple size was per­fect for only cov­er­ing one side of the table­top with 3 coats.

I messed up with the paint col­or. Tip: When col­or match­ing, DON’T USE YOUR PHONE PICTURES. The post-pro­cess­ing or light­ing will mess it up and you’ll get the total­ly wrong col­or like I did. Thank­ful­ly, the shelf came with veneer stick­ers which I brought with me to paint match the 2nd time around.

Mis­take:

Redo:

Behr’s Dynasty and Mar­quee paints are awe­some

It takes over a week before the paint will quit being so sticky, espe­cial­ly if there are sev­er­al thick coats. Appar­ent­ly, it can take up to sev­er­al months to cure all the way!

LEgs

It’s real­ly hard to find legs for some­thing like this. There’s always the option of a fold-out diag­o­nal brac­ing (as seen in the ref­er­ence images above), but I want­ed ded­i­cat­ed legs since I’m plan­ning on putting heavy items and pres­sure on it. End­ed up find­ing a com­pa­ny off Ama­zon that allows you to choose a height and will even do cus­tom orders. The one I chose tele­scopes and folds!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they’re sent from Chi­na, so it took longer than I’d planned. The prod­uct was good qual­i­ty. There end­ed up being more holes than screws… So, I just secured it until it seemed sol­id enough.

Steps: Mea­sure, mark, awl, pilot hole (used tape to pre­vent punch­ing through), install

Upper Left: had a bit and screw gauge which was super help­ful; Cen­ter Top: Used an awl to help guide the drill bit and pre­vent slip­page; Upper Right: Mea­sured then taped off the drill bit to pre­vent myself from punch­ing through to the oth­er side of the table; Bot­tom Row: I’m not sure how many screws are nec­es­sary, so I just installed all that were sup­plied

Hinges

Took me for­ev­er to choose a hinge. Log­ic might point in the direc­tion of a piano hinge, but I fig­ured that the ³⁄₄″ board vs. ¹⁄₄″ shelf thick­ness might be a lot to weight and result in pos­si­ble frac­ture, so decid­ed on strap hinges to help dis­trib­ute the weight and pre­vent pos­si­ble break­age from repeat­ed use. In ret­ro­spect, I won­der if a piano hinge would be bet­ter? It would cer­tain­ly have been a much eas­i­er install. I also bought and con­sid­ered sup­port hinges on the sides though did not use them.

Most of my time dur­ing this project was cal­cu­lat­ing, mea­sur­ing, and try­ing to use tape to help with visu­al­iz­ing the end result

Spent sooo much time try­ing to visu­al­ize and cal­cu­late things like strap hinge gap and clear­ance. This is why a piano hinge would have been way more straight­for­ward

Hard­ware. What do you use to install on a ³⁄₄″ piece of ply­wood? What if it punch­es through to the oth­er side? Short screws are real­ly hard to find. I end­ed up set­tling on #12 thread ³⁄₄″ length flat head screws. ³⁄₄″ length on ³⁄₄″ thick­ness?? The met­al hinge itself should give just enough buffer to pre­vent a punch-through.

Time to install the hinges to the table­top. At some point, you have cal­cu­lat­ed as much as you can, so you just have to do it. I was incred­i­bly ner­vous doing this. You can’t redo it after every­thing you’ve already done.

I had to turn to the inter­net to find the screws for the ¹⁄₄″ shelf. I got #12 gauge ¹⁄₂″ length screws. Same with the table side, the hope is that the hinge, again, will buffer enough to pre­vent a punch through

The ply­wood was too heavy for me to lift on my own, so I thought maybe lay­ing the book­shelf on its side would help. It’s fine for the top hinge when lying down, but it end­ed up skew­ing the bot­tom hinge. The best bet would be to jig up some sort of sup­port, find a helper, or bet­ter yet, find a table/chair that will hold the board up steadi­ly and flat while you secure the hinges. Mine is off-kil­ter because I laid it on its side. Dog­gone it!!! I don’t rec­om­mend doing it this way.

Laid that shelf on its side to try and install the hinge straps. The lit­tle felt pieces you see on the under­side are just adhe­sive felt strips that are cut to cush­ion the met­al legs as its fold­ed up against the wood

If you insist on using this method, then at least turn the book­shelf to the oth­er side to help pre­vent skew­ing, and to not do it on car­pet if pos­si­ble. The prob­lem is that not only is the ply­wood heavy, but so is the shelf. Try­ing to flip it onto the oth­er side has a high chance of rip­ping out or break­ing the already installed hinge. That’s why I still do not rec­om­mend this method, even if it’s doable. Just rig up a sup­port for the table or find a helper. It’s a waste espe­cial­ly giv­en how long it took to even get to this point of the project. Ugggh!

Wall anchoring

DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!!! Seri­ous­ly!! The table is heavy com­pared to the book­shelf, so it WILL tip!

Just be sure that every­thing is lev­el (I had to use a wood pan­el under­neath plus card­board box shims to make it lev­el) and that the car­pet (if your floor is car­pet) isn’t imped­ing any­thing, and then use wall anchors! Find a stud or invest in some real­ly nice dry­wall anchors. I’ve always used the E‑Z Ancor brand and like them a lot.

End Result

In the end, I chose not to use the sup­port hinges I bought because it was too much work, too com­plex look­ing, and it seemed steady enough with­out it, espe­cial­ly with the shelf anchored to the wall. I have yet to try it out with any projects, but I will! Even­tu­al­ly!

Though I’m dis­ap­point­ed in the instal­la­tion mis­take, I am just hap­py to be done with this project that I thought would take be 2 week­ends but end­ed up tak­ing mover a month. Why? Weath­er (I try to do things out­side since I lack a ded­i­cat­ed work­shop), deliv­ery wait times, mess­ing up on the paint, and miss­ing hard­ware.

For ref­er­ence, the table sits about 36″ off the ground, the height of a bar-height table.

Project Images

The upper, unfin­ished wood pic­tures are when the wood was uncut. There are 3 open shelves above and 3 under the table­top