Lego play tray from repurposed odds and ends

I’m not exactly sure when I built this but within the last month or so. I think I’ve mentioned previously that it was a Lego Christmas and then after Christmas my husband dug out his old Legos and added those to the pile. Soon we had far more Legos than would stay neatly on my favorite bankrupt airline food service-turned-crafting trays. But with a tile top kitchen table and wood floors everywhere we desperately needed something with a lip to keep stray Legos from skittering away into oblivion.

So I went down into the basement and dug up an old corkboard and an old artist’s canvas that happened to be the same size, about 2 feet by 3 feet I think. I’d been meaning to recover the corkboard with fabric and paint it or something but that hadn’t happened in several years so I decided to get over that idea and use it. The canvas was rotting off the frame so it was quick work to pull that off, a little slower to remove all the staples and the corner braces. I cut a piece of spare neoprene to fit the depression on the corkboard and then glued some leftover nylon boat canvas on top of that and screwed the emptied frame on top of that into the corkboard’s frame.

The whole thing is light, , super easy to clean, fits behind or under the sofa and can hold a lot of Legos. Don’t ask me why I have spare neoprene, I don’t remember but it comes in handy! I’ve been very pleased with how well this tray works for the kids, especially considering everything I used was leftover or salvage. I suppose it might be nice to paint or seal the frame . . .