Cohousing-L Mailing List: Dining room tables at Bellingham Cohousing

[Edwin Simmers (edwinsimmers]

Great discussion here. The six dining room tables at Bellingham Cohousing were 
designed by Chuck Durrett. We made them ourselves out of 3/4 inch birch or 
maple-faced plywood with solid wood trim around the edges.

You won’t see the photos I’ve attached to this email if you’re reading on the 
cohousing-l list. I’ve posted photos and dimensions of them to my Dropbox. 
Here’s a link if you want to see and download them:

 <https://tinyurl.com/vlaxecu <https://tinyurl.com/vlaxecu>>

The tables are boat-shaped because, as Chuck says, this allows all three people 
sitting on one side of a table to see and talk to each other. They usually fit 
six people each but eight can fit if we use the ends for seating.

The tables are about 85 inches long, 40 inches wide in the middle, and taper to 
about 31 inches wide at the ends. They are 30+ inches tall and weigh about 45 
pounds.

We used commercial folding legs that are placed about 16 inches in from the 
ends of the table so that a person sitting at the end has freedom of knee 
movement. 

If we were building them again, we could have moved the legs an inch or so 
closer to the ends so that three chairs would more easily slide under each side 
of the table when not in use. After we built the tables we got all our chairs 
cheap from a restaurant that was redecorating. Also, we might have glued some 
blocks of wood under the tables in the spots where the legs attach. Since the 
table tops are only 3/4 inch thick, they aren’t thick enough for sturdy screws 
so we had to also use glue between the metal leg parts and the top.

Let me know if you have any questions.







         


Edwin Simmers
2636 Donovan Ave.
Bellingham, WA 98225
(360) 927-0863 (phone and text)
edwinsimmers [at] bellcoho.com