Mom Creates Custom Lego Station for Kids With Nail Glue and Spray Paint

A mom has shared her brilliant DIY way of giving her kids their own dedicated play space.

Elizabeth Allen from Kansas is a big fan of the plastic construction toy Lego but was tired of seeing the colorful blocks scattered throughout her house.

"My children had their Legos all over our kitchen table. They needed a space where they could create without having to put them away all the time," Allen told Newsweek.

Lego table before and after
A picture of the $30 vanity before and after mom Elizabeth Allen set to work to create a custom play space for her kids. She told Newsweek that she created the Lego-building station for under... Elizabeth Allen

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in Maryland explored the positive impact of Lego on childhood development in 2016. With a series of experiments, they discovered that, when kids are playing with building blocks, they are developing their spatial reasoning skills.

Alongside building essential abilities that can help young people excel in the future, Lego has also been proven to bolster well-being for both kids and adults. Lego Group's Play Well Report 2022 revelated that 93 percent of adults regularly feel stressed, but 86 percent of adults said that playing with Lego helps them to unwind.

While her children love Lego, Allen was less keen on the mess and set to work with a solution to keep the whole family happy—she built a custom Lego play table.

"I found an old vanity on Facebook Marketplace for $40 that would work perfectly," she said. "I used sandpaper and spray-painted it. My 6-year-old son picked out the red, and my daughter, 8, picked purple and pink."

DIY Lego table
Pictures of the three-day process of making the custom Lego play table. The whole project cost under $100. Elizabeth Allen

Once the table was prepared, it was time to make it the perfect Lego station. "I bought a package of Lego plates for about $26. For the drawers, I used a 3-inch round hole saw and Bondo [putty] to cover the hole, sanded the edges and the whole circle."

Allen secured the Lego plates to the vanity using liquid nail glue after cutting the plates to size. "I also used liquid nail glue for the knobs on the drawers, then spray-painted the drawers to the desired color," explained the mom.

Allen shared her creation in the Facebook group Home, Garden and DIY, where thousands of users reacted to the clever idea.

In the post on Facebook, Allen wrote how excited she was to have reclaimed some space and given her kids an extra-special play area.

"I can't wait to see all the creations my kiddos are going to come up with. And I get my kitchen table back," Allen added.

When she had finished the project, which took only three days, her kids were so excited about their new Lego table.

"My children were extremely happy," Allen said. "The excitement was like Christmas morning. They play on the table every day after school. I love seeing all the creations they make."

Do you have impressive and inspiring DIY projects you'd like to share? We're looking for the most creative and ingenious ones! Send them in to life@newsweek.com and they could be featured on our site.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer


Alice Gibbs is a Newsweek Senior Internet Trends & Culture Reporter based in the U.K. For the last two years ... Read more

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