The One with The Foosball Table
Owning a foosball table is the dream for every f.r.i.e.n.d.s fan and so was ours. When Shivendra and I, first moved into the new apartment, we wanted it to be the playground for our ideas. A place for all the creative ideas, building fun projects, doing crazy stuff. With all that in mind, now was the time to choose our first project. It had to be the perfect start, something we could be proud of and something doable for first time makers. And then we thought to ourselves, what better start than owning that foosball table, having our own little Joey-Chandler moment. So like any (in)sane person the very next day we ordered our foosball table. It wasn’t the big one from the show, it was a small light-weighted DIY foosball table kit and well within our budget. Our table was scheduled to arrive in 7 days. Those 7 days had us waiting for like 7 weeks.
Thinking of foosball table for all that time, had us thinking — How can we make it more suitable for our hall — where we would spend most of the time. And one would agree that a foosball table, and a small one at that, would eventually get chucked in some corner of the hall, because how often are you going to play it anyways. That had us running our minds what else can we do to make it more in-place, which gave us the idea that what if we can somehow adjust a glass over our foosball table and make a small coffee table out of it. That would serve us a purpose for a small table in the hall alongside the sofa and foosball to hai hi(foosball is anyways there).
After spending a few days, we had a full-fledged plan in mind on the transformation for our upcoming foosball table. The day came and our foosball table arrived. We spent 3 hours assembling it. When assembling, we realized that the material of the table was MDF, which is not a very good quality wood and might not withstand the glasswork we had planned. Next task was to get a reinforcing wooden structure for the table. The thought was to add 5 wood blocks at the bottom of the table, 4 at the corners and one at the center for support, and get 2 wood strips placed above the scoring strips to provide more height for the glass to fit in. The height was determined based on the players' height and width was calculated based on free-movement of hands when playing. Those 2 wood strips will help get us the desired height for the glass.
Next day we took it to a carpenter for all the woodworks. The guy was really humble and easily understood what we wanted to do with the table. He suggested that it would be better to add a full-frame of wood beneath the table which would give the table a good support. For the 2 wood strips on the upper side, he only had unpolished & unpainted wood, which would not go with our black table. We then got some black spray paint and painted those wood strips black. After all the woodwork, the end result was very satisfying. Our table now had a good enough weight, much better grip and looked quite sturdy as well. Next day we took the table to fit the glass over it. Now the glass was definitely prone to accidents and had to be near-to-unbreakable because we are two bachelors and our unagi game is always strong(sarcasm alert). Hence we went with toughened glass as it was perfect as per our requirements. We took the table to a glass workshop. We asked him if he can make the glass a few inched wider on the sides and he was on board with our idea. He delivered our final product very next day and it was just beautiful to look at. We brought it home, got it cleaned and then did the most important work, took lots of photos and cracked open a cold one.
This was it. And just like that we had just built our very first DIY project and we think we did a pretty good job at it.
Any suggestions or thought, let me know:
Insta + Twitter + LinkedIn + Medium | Shivam Aggarwal
Insta + Twitter + LinkedIn + Medium | Shivendra Soni
