Childrens Picnic Table

I built this picnic table for my niece last August. After looking around for a small children's picnic table, all I could find was the cheap plastic stuff. Most of the ones I looked at would have probably ended up in the recycle bin after two years or so. Buying her a good quality wood table wasn't going to happen, so I decided to build it myself. I started to look around for some plans for children's picnic tables, you wouldn't think this would be very hard to do with all the stuff available on the internet these days. I found plenty of plans but some of the dimensions were rather strange for kids tables. Some of these tables were almost big enough for small adults or teens and others were more suitable for doll furniture. I decided to start from scratch and came up with the table that you see above. I measured a bunch of kids furniture that looked like it was proportioned correctly. Then I took a good look at some plans for adult tables that were made nicely and went from there. The table that you see above is my own design, using the dimensions that I came up with. For more picture of the table visit my photo album.

The table is made of 4/4 Western Red cedar, and is assembled using Gorilla Glue and 4 penny galvanized nails to hold the top and seats secure, while the rest of the table is bolted together with 1/4" carriage bolts. All edges have been treated with a 1/4" round over bit, and the corners radiused. To protect it from the weather, the table has 3 coats of Minwax Helmsman Polyurethane finish.