How much to pay for cabinet shop cuts?

[Marco Nicosia]

Hi all,

I've got a mini-gloat and a question.

I don't have a shop setup right now, so I can't make much these days. A lot of the furniture in our house is pretty ghetto.

Normally, I'd hardly ever buy any furniture at IKEA. But I was there during their sale, and whoa, I found this oak table:

$200! Finally, a table which can seat all of our guests when we have a lot of people over for dinner. No more tiny ghetto table!

But gloat-karma wouldn't let me get away with such a simple plan. A table that's almost 7' long is stupid big for daily use. It pretty much dominates the room (duh).

But I am a tight-fisted guy, and not willing to give up so easily on my hard-won (ok, accidental) windfall.

Issue #182 of FWW gave me the idea that I could have a cabinet shop cut two 12" leaves out of the tabletop and aprons. Then I could install table slides and alignment pins from Rockler. (The table top is a glue-up sort of random-plank, not a solid cut of oak, so I'm not too concerned about wood movement?)

How much should I expect to pay the cabinet shop? What's a fair price?

[John L. Poole]

[Edwin Pawlowski]

The Sunday paper had a $2 off coupon

[RicodJour]

That was last Sunday's and it expired the week before.

R

[mac davis]

Not seeing the table, I'd wonder if you might be hurting it structurally by cutting it... a lot of tables with 2 or more leaves sometimes have additional legs...

(we ended up with my parents dining room table.. 8 legs and no place for chairs/feet)

[bf]

I think this is a bad idea. Your table will likely end up looking like crap if you cut it up like this. It isn't likely that a cabinent shop would even take this job.. because they don't want you complaining about how they ruined your table. If you find someone willing to do this, expect them to clamp a straight edge to the table and cut it with a circular saw.

My advice, either learn to live with this big table or buy one with leaves in it..

[Chris Friesen]

For what it's worth, I think it's definately possible to do what you're considering. You shouldn't lose much strength from cutting the aprons, as the slides essentially make up for it. Just make sure you don't get the slides designed for pedastal tables.

You may want to make your leaves a bit larger--taking 24" out of that table still leaves it 5' long. Maybe 18" leaves would be better?

Have you considered where you're going to store the leaves when you're not using them?

Chris