Building a butterfly coffeetable
As a famlily farm we love to have a good and cozy coffee break so everybody who works can socialize a bit during the breaks. For this reason we have strict coffee breaks at 10.00 and 15.00 o clock. During this break we serve coffee and cookies. Until 2016 we always did this on white camping chairs and a camping table or just old wooden crates as tables.
Unfortunaly there were alot of issues with this way of having a coffee break which annoyed me.
- For example every season atleast 5 chairs would break during a coffee break, resulting in somebody falling over with their hot coffee.
- the table got hit basically every break, and we were spilling alot of coffee this way.
- Mostly the chairs were not all put back in the transport bin, and i had to spend 5 minutes putting the chairs back in the transport bin.
- Chairs were not the same and didn’t stack nice, and often got put back in a wrong order.
- When it rained in the past 3 days the chairs were always wet.
- chairs got lost during transport (falling out of the bin on the road).
- The transport bin also got used as trashbin.
- People form groups, causing the crew to split.
Making that sumup i realized we really need a solution for that. I started scratching my head and figured what to make. It had to be big to suit up to 24 people while having a wide seating area. it should remain a dry seat and table during and after rain showers. It’s got to be solid, and big enough to fit nice diner plates on.
I ended up creating a 4.5m long table with benches, foldable on 2 sides. This table is made on 2 tubes where a forklift can go in for transport. The benches and tables fold up during transport like a butterfly, and have parallel feet with a lock to keep them locked during transport. while folded up it doesn’t get wet during heavy rain showers as the rain just drips off straight away. In the middle it has space for 12 crates of beer, when it’s folded in.
I would say, just watch the video