Last year, my entire kitchen was packed with seedlings for several months as I patiently waited for the New England winter to transform into spring. In an effort to reclaim my countertop space and the area in front of my sliding glass door, I used xDesign to design these light duty seedling tables that I could place in my basement. This year, we started our seedlings on these tables under grow lights and then transitioned them to the green house before finally planting them in the garden.I started with a multi-body approach to design the tables and then assembled together the other plastic container components. You might be thinking that they are there to hold potting soil, or something reasonable for starting seedlings, but they are actually pieces of our aquaponics system. I'll be sure to post about that in the "Made In 3D" community in the near future.

Although the two tables are slightly different, I built them in much the same way...

• I used 3/4" plywood for the majority of the framework and joined them together with pocket hole screws.
• I glued two layers of plywood together to build the legs and ripped them to 1.5" square
• I cut a 3/4" piece of plywood for the table top and covered it with 1/8" hardboard that has a glossy white prefinished surface on one side. This material will repel any water that falls on it and makes it really easy to clean up potting soil messes. 
• I used the same 1/8" hardboard for the lower shelf, but instead of using a full second layer of 3/4" plywood like I did for the top, I simply increased the number of cross supports (or 'joists', if you will). As these shelves only need to support light weight objects, this approach provides ample strength while minimizing the weight of the overall table.  

Have you ever built anything like this? Has this inspired you to built a light duty table of your own design? Let me know in the comments!

MAKERSwoodworking ​​​​​​​HomeByMe ​​​​​​​