Trofast to LEGO table in one weekend

IKEA items used: Trofast Storage with plastic bins

Gather supplies:

• High gloss interior paint. I used Red, Blue, Yellow for the shelving unit
• Spray paint designed to used on plastic. I used Red, Blue, Yellow, and green
• 4 caster wheels (screws for wheels)
• 6 10×10 building block base plates. I used Blue and Green
• 3″ Sewer pipe caps from the plumbing department at big box hardware store. I used 8
• Sandpaper rough enough grit to be able to sand off the markings on the sewer pipe caps
• Spray adhesive
• hot glue
• 3″ hole saw
• foam paint brushes
• screw gun/drill

I took the storage unit and turned it upside down so that the bottom was now the top and therefore had a edge to contain the building blocks. I painted with the high gloss interior paint using the colors I chose and in the areas I chose. I also used the same paint to paint the sewer pipe caps after I used an electric hand held sander to sand off the words that are molded into the sewer pipe caps.

Using the plastic spray paint I painted the bins that were clear to make them more colorful. I purchased my unit at a yard sale so it came with the clear bins. You could purchase whatever color bins you wanted, but I did not want to purchase more bins when I had all of the clear bins. The plastic spray paint takes 24 hours to be ‘touchable’ and a full 7 days to be scratch resistant so paint your bins as the first thing you do.

Once the unit and the sewer pipe covers were completely dry I drew circles were I wanted the building block ‘nubs’ to be using building blocks as my guide and measuring the ends. I wanted to do a 2×2 block on one end and 2 1×2 blocks on the other end.

Using the hole saw I drilled a very shallow hole grooves for the caps to sit in, do not go all the way through the unit, only go 1/4″ or so, just enough for the sewer pipe cover to have an area to ‘sit’ in. I used a hot glue gun to glue the pipe covers into the grooves I created. Once glued in I used more hot glue around like a clear silicone caulking technique around.

Turn the unit upside down and attach the wheels using appropriate length and width screws for the wheels you chose. Make sure the screws are not too long as to go through to where the bins are slid in. I did, out of lack of planning on my part for that purchase and I used a multi master tool to cut off the part of the screw that popped through so my son would not get cut with the screw popping through.

Final step was to attach the building base plates on top. I chose to make a pattern with my colors but you can do whatever you want on the base plate placing. The size of the area requires the 10×10 plates to be trimmed. It’s important to make sure that when you determine where to cut, you place building blocks on the plate where the line should be to ensure that the blocks will still match up to the ‘nubs’ on that line where you are cutting.

When you have all of the baseplates cut and your design determined you need to attach to the unit with spray adhesive. Important again use building blocks to lay out the design. Snap each base plate together with a block to form a whole large rectangle of the full size. That way you know the base plates are spaced correctly. Spray the adhesive to the unit and the large baseplate rectangle and place on the unit.

That is it, place the bins in the slots of the unit and fill with all of your LEGOs.

~ by Donna Cook

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