Table for Two

We've been pretty happy with the floorplan and layout we decided on when designing our Airstream, however there's one thing that we have been missing; a table for two! We have the one-seater bar at the end of the counter which is used heavily by moi when supervising J while he's doing his chef thing. But, when it comes time for both of us to take a seat, we just head to our couch. Eating on the couch can be tricky, especially when you have to find a place to put your wine glass when someone says "can you pass the salt please." We'd been tossing around the idea of adding a fold-down/flip-up bar to the original bar area to make room for two people to sit. We had a chunk of our birch countertop leftover from cutting out the insert for our stove. So, J cut it to size for our bar addition and I sanded it and finished it.

The hardest part of this project was finding the right hardware to hold up the bar! I had a hard time describing to Google what I was looking for: slide-out countertop hardware? fold-down counter bracket? floating shelf hardware? Drop-leaf table support? (Now we're getting somewhere). Drop-leaf table support for table with no apron? BINGO! Yes, that is apparently more or less what we made: a drop-leaf table extension with no apron - no vertical surface to mount a bracket on. Whew, so that narrowed our hardware choices a lot, given that our "drop-leaf" was kind of large; cantilevering some 21 inches into space, and kind of heavy: 1.5" thick-slab of solid birch wood. No puny hardware for us.

Here's what we ended up with - a pair of drop leaf table
supports made by Rockler, specifically for "larger loads."

Just pull those two black tabs and the counter folds down.

J finishes up installing the fancy hardware. This is what the bar looks like when it's not in use. 

Seating for two! We got a folding bar stool from Ikea that stashes away against the wall when not in use.

We are very happy with our little seating area. The counter is super sturdy (I was skeptical), and has no problem handling dinner, elbows, or our aging hefty laptop.

Also, our hardware came with the latest and greatest Rockler catalog, which we proceeded to fight over who got to drool on it first. I think that it is possibly a bad sign when the best thing that came in the mail is the hardware catalog...? But they have so much cool stuff!!