Author name: hunter@hlwimmer.com

Casie has done a great job keeping her Esty shop — ModApple.net — up to date and in order, but the changing light was making photography tough. Plus, we were using the dining room, which meant that — on shooting days — our house looked like an antique shop.

I had wanted to use the garage as a storage and "processing" space for her and it dawned on me that it'd make a nice shooting space, too. Even without flash, the light in there is pretty good and we just needed a space to do it. Enter Ikea.

With two inexpensive Ikea tabletops and a pair of odd Sweedish hinges we found in the shelving section, we were able to fashion a folding table. And, as luck would have it, the spacing between the standards in the garage door where the perfect size to house the "background" tabletop.

The shopping list:

• 2 Ikea Vika Amon table tops matching in size (we used a white one and a walnut one)
• 2 Ikea Ekby Riset adjustable shelving beackets (hinges)
• 2 fender washers, 2 machine bolts, 2 wingnuts (to replace the Ikea hex-head nut)
• 2 Ikea Ekby Lerberg brackets (to support the weight of the table when down — the keyhole design of these make them easily removable when the table is not in use)

Because of the left/right nature of the hinges, I needed to replace the Ikea bolt with a flat-head phillips M5 screw (27cents at Ace) so that they would fit snuggly against the tabletop. Presently, I have wingnuts on the bolts to loosen/tighten, but I've discovered that — while the hinges and their "teeth" are strong — they aren't strong enough to support the weight, so I'll add a fender washer between them to keep them from biting (which is how the hinges were made to work) and add a simple swing-out brace to brace the table when it's down or add some strapping (think: top bunk on a sailboat). I'll add more pictures when I do.

So, now — for maybe $45 — we have a collapsable shooting table… and a clean dining room.