The Salon Table

When we got Brigadoon she had a typical salon table.  It was narrow, with two huge leaves that folded up into the salon.  This way you could have a table, but not have it on the way.  On a cruising boat, this makes sense.  On a liveaboard cruising boat, it made no sense.

As you can see, it's a nice table and, when it folds out, the table is so huge it dominated the entire salon.  Well, we live in the salon so, we decided back in November, to remove the table.

The plan was to redesign something else, something that made more sense for us, for the space, and for the boat.

So I set about to designing a replacement.

This is the original table layout.  As you can see it dominates the salon.  With the leaves up, you cannot move through the boat and, even with the leaves down you don't have three square feet to move around in anywhere on the boat.

So we removed the table and have lived with this since November.

So I came up with the design of having the table attached to the bulkhead of the galley.  It would hang there and fold up when we needed it and be out of the way when we didn't.  

...with the second leaf folded up and out from under the first leaf.

Now to actually build the thing.  The plan was to buy no more wood.  I was going to use the existing table, as the source of everything I needed.  Every piece of wood, every screw, every hinge was to come from the existing table.

I thought about hiring a woodworker.  I talked to an amazing guy in my marina to cut the tabletops to my dimensions.  All were good ideas but, in the end, I decided to find a shop where I could rent space and do the job myself.

And well...here it is.

The table hangs against the bulkhead as designed.  By cutting up the huge table leaves I was able to also use part of one as the shelf.  The curved knees come from the swinging knees that supported the huge leaves when they were raised.

The table leg is hidden behind the hanging table leaves.

This is the table folded up.  I was able to keep most of the fiddles.  I wanted to.  They were beautiful.  The leg attaches with a stainless steel bracket and pin.

In this picture you can see one leg against the wall.  That is the actual main leg.  It's still pinned in place.  The leg supporting the main table is the one for the second leaf.

And here is the second leaf folded out into the walkway of the salon.  The second leg is pinned in place too, to the table and the deck.

And Kerry is happy.  That is what is important.  I'm happy too.  I met all my goals. This cost me about $30.00 in shop time, and about another $50.00 in stainless steel brackets.

The rest was a bunch of time scribbling on paper, taking measurements, taking more measurements, making that first scary cut into those huge beautiful leaves, and figuring out the assembly.

The design came together as planned, with only a couple small adjustments.













What else do I need to do?

Well, the sharp corners need to go but, I can do that in phase II.  Right now, we have a salon table back.