We had a 2-seater square pub table from our old house that didn’t fit in our new house. I didn’t want it to completely go to waste, so I brainstormed how to make it work. I decided a bar pushed up against the wall in our basement would work perfectly in our “gaming” area with the foosball table. My plan was to re-use the legs, cut scrap wood down to size, use 2 letterpress trays on the top and order a custom cut glass top. The end result: a bar table / memory display case.

First I flipped the original table over and studied how the top was constructed. After a lot of boring math, I figured out the dimensions I needed to construct the table and cut scrap wood I had down to size.

I have a lot of letterpress trays laying around that I had purchased to resell in my Etsy store, Ruggy Revival (send me a message through Etsy or at [email protected] if you are interested in purchasing any for your own projects!). After measuring, I found that 1 full tray + 2/3 of a tray would fit perfectly on the table top.

It was just a matter of assembling the new wood top together by copying the old design, and attaching the letterpress trays to the top! The custom cut glass top protects the treasures and makes the table functional.

Between my husband and I, we have a lot of important family “heirloom” trinkets like grandpa’s military pins and pocket knife, old coins, a broken antique pocket watch, etc. They had just been sitting in storage for years because we didn’t know what to do with them. I love finally having a place to display old treasures from the past!