Last fall we spent a few weekends in our T@B before the snow fell and loved it! Then winter came and Dory (that’s what she’s being called for now) was all tucked in under her winter blanket. Winter gave us a lot of time to think and explore what we could do with Dory. While browsing the Internet I came across a series of YouTube videos by Richard Lewis where he shares some of the modifications he had done to his T@B. We liked some of them so much that we also decided to implement them.

The first of those modifications is to replace the drop-down table with real wood slats for the bed. This just made sense to us because moving the table in and out became a hassle and the space under the table was being wasted; space which would come in handy if Maggie wanted a little more room to spread out. The steps below walk you through what we did to install the slats and you can view Richard Lewis’ original video here.

We noticed with our T@B that we had a partial ledger board under our Cool Cat air conditioner and a full-length ledger board on the opposite side. All we needed to do was to measure for and install a ledger on the bench seating above the propane heater. I purchased a small piece of 1″ x 2″ maple and finished it with a natural polyurethane.

Before any modifications have been made.

I removed the wood under the bench seat in order to make sure I wouldn’t screw into something that would cause problems down the road. Once I knew I was clear I pre-drilled a few screw holes in the new ledger board and attached it to the bench.

The ledger board is being installed.

The ledger board has been installed. You can get a peek at the wiring from here

Once the ledger was installed I re-assembled the bench.

The ledger has been completely installed and the bench cover has been replaced

Juli and I went through a few ideas on what to use for slats but since we had only 1/2″ of clearance above the ledger to ensure we wouldn’t be higher than the benches on either side we found cedar planks at a local hardware store which fit the dimensions perfectly without needing to be planed down. I cut them to length, gave them a quick sanding to avoid splinters when moving them around gave them a test fit. As you can see, there is a lot of useable space under the bed now. We won’t need to place the port-a-potty under the bed like Mr. Lewis as we have a bathroom in our T@B but it will be perfect for a small dog who likes to sleep in cozy spaces (as long as the heater isn’t on of course!).

Cedar slats have been placed. You can see the room underneath which is now available

Another look at the slats in place

Next time I’ll go over another quick modification that we did in order to create a different, more maneuverable table in place of the lift table that we removed.