Dear Thomas the Tank Engine,
You and your toy train tracks are very confusing, overwhelming, expensive, and somehow they are always scattered around my house. You’re very lucky my son is obsessed with you.
But, seriously though, these train tracks. Some days they have me wishing I would’ve just gone with the Ikea Figure 8 set. Alex loves him some Thomas & Friends though, so here we are.
I have been wanting to set up a train table for Alex since his birthday this year, I just never got around to it until now. Better late than never, right? Right. Plus, seriously, if I was asked to build another “rain tack” again just for it to be destroyed 5 minutes later, I was probably going to lose my mind.
We had an Ikea Lack coffee table that we bought when we first moved into our apartment back in 2o11. It was supposed to be our temporary entertainment center, but we used it until we built this one, three years later. It was a good little table, but it needed a new lease on life. It’s the perfect height for him to play and I love that it has the shelf underneath so we can store his extra tracks and trains. This is what project mode looks like right after your kids are in bed.
Here’s how I did it (and you can too!)
I started out by sanding the top really well using 60 and 100 grit sandpaper. I really wanted to paint to grip since I was too impatient planning not to prime first.
Then, I put two coats of green latex paint that I had around on. I had previously figured out the best layout to fit the tabletop, so using wood glue on the wood tracks and construction adhesive on the plastic ones, I secured everything to the table.
After letting that dry overnight, I used my round sponges to make bushes all around the table and sketched out the helicopter landing pad and lake with a pencil. I just used regular old craft paint to paint everything. This is always the fun part for me, I love painting!
I finished it off with a coat of Mod Podge and now it is all ready for many epic play times with Alex and Christian (once he stops using the trains as teethers). I love it! And more importantly, Alex loves it!
Oh, and we don’t have Harold the Helicopter yet (if you were wondering about the heli-pad, but Alex is getting it for Christmas this year. I had an epic gift picking out fail with him where I let him pick two Thomas Friends out for his gift on Amazon thinking he wouldn’t remember at all. A month later, if Christmas is mentioned, he says “I get Harold and Ferdinand!”. Alex – 1, Mom – 0. Toddlers are like elephants.
All in all, I think this one is a total win! It only took me a few days and, besides buying the train tracks (last year for Christmas), I had everything else already around the house. Even if you had to go out and buy everything, it would still be a fraction of what you’d pay for a pre-made train table. Can’t beat that!
