Cheap Small Dog Grooming Table

This is my first Instructable and it came from my wife looking online for a grooming table and looking at the prices and what they consisted of, I thought - "you can do that with some copper pipe". These things retail anywhere from £75 upwards and I spent less than a third of that.

So here goes.

As it's my first posting here, I didn't take pictures as I went so please excuse the pics of the finished article, but I think it's simple enough to follow anyway.

Step 1: Start With a Cheap Used Table

1st step is to find someone selling a small table on Ebay which is no longer loved or wanted. This one I found locally and I won it for £3.20. It's an old IKEA table around 75cm square. Seller advised that there were some surface marks and scratches on the top. This is no problem for a grooming table as you'll see later.

Step 2: Get Some Parts From the Local DIY Store

I used a:-

15mm Copper Wall Plate Elbow (outside water tap adaptor) £3

15mm Compression Elbow £2

15mm Copper Pipe - one length will suffice £6

15mm Saddle pipe clips (10 pack is £3, but only using 4)

4 Carpet tiles - found some cheap ones on clearance in our local DIY store. Doesn't matter if the colour doesn't match as you'll see later £4

Total spend so far plus the table at £3.20 is around £21-£22

Also you'll need a staple gun and staples (of course), and some self tapping screws. Also some small machine screws and nuts for creating the dog lead hooks.

Also I needed a strip of 18x69 planed timber

Step 3: Now Put It All Together

Wall plate elbow screws to the table runner. Had to cut a notch out of the table to clear the wall plate compression fitting.

Cut the pipe the the desired length for a vertical and add the elbow

Cut another length to run horizontally.

Finish the pipe end with a push on End Stop

Add the pipe clips for the dog leads (head and tail leads needed)

Step 4: Cover the Table

Take the carpet tiles and place them rubber side up, cut to size and staple them to the table.

Stapling allows us to replace them in the future if they get a little worn, by simply levering them off.

Step 5: Lessons Learnt

15mm pipe is a bit lightweight even for this build so additional 15mm wall plate elbow and a elbow would be needed to create a complete bridge of copper pipe.

Alternatively you can use 22mm pipe and fittings but 22mm wallplate elbows are a little rare and 22mm pipe is more than twice the cost.

However even with all this the total build cost is around a 1/3rd of what you'd pay for a proper grooming table.You can save even more by using end feed solder pipe fittings, but I didn't fancy my chances with that so I stuck with easier compression fittings.

I wouldn't recommend push fit connectors because they allow rotation and plastic pipe which is neither stiff nor strong enough.