How to Fit Your Table Legs — A Step-by-Step Guide

Your legs arrive detached from the top, and the holes are already drilled in both. Fitting them is a matter of lining the two up and driving in the screws we've supplied — around ten minutes' work, with no measuring, marking or drilling of your own.

That's true of everything we make: dining tables, benches, desks, coffee tables, console tables, dressing tables, and the garden range as well. Here's exactly how it goes, and what to do on the rare occasion a hole doesn't line up.

Why the legs arrive separately

Two reasons. Detached legs travel far better — a table with its legs on is a large, awkward thing to get through a doorway without knocking a corner, and it's much more likely to arrive damaged.

The second is simply how we're set up. The steel legs come from a specialist leg manufacturer rather than being made here in the workshop, and they ship on their own timeline. So your legs and your top may well turn up on different days, both within your delivery window. If your top lands first and there's no leg box with it, nothing has gone wrong — it's on its way. There's more on how deliveries work on our delivery information page.

What you should have in front of you

Open the leg box and count. How many pieces you have depends on the style you chose:

The screws are in there too, and there are enough for the job — you shouldn't need to buy anything. They're M5 × 25mm Pozi dome head screws, the same on every leg style we sell. Worth knowing the size, in case one ever rolls under a kitchen unit and doesn't come back.

The floor protectors are already fitted to the feet, so there's nothing to attach at the bottom.

What you'll need

• A Pozi driver bit

• Ideally an impact driver, or a drill with a screwdriver bit in it

• A hand screwdriver works perfectly well too. Because the holes are already there, it's not hard going — it just takes a bit longer

• A second pair of hands, if you've ordered one of the longer, heavier pieces

Step by step

1. Leave the top in its packaging, face down. Don't unwrap it first. The packing is there to protect the waxed surface, and it does that job just as well on a kitchen floor as anywhere else. Work with it wrapped, and only take the covering off once the legs are on and it's the right way up. A waxed finish is a soft finish — it's the loose grit on a floor that marks a top, not the floor itself.

2. Find the holes. Turn a leg or frame over and you'll see the fixing holes in the mounting plate. On the underside of your top, the matching holes are already drilled and positioned for the style you ordered. There's no marking out to do and no measuring — the two sets are made to meet.

3. Offer up the first leg and line the holes up. No right way round to worry about; it's clear from the shape of the leg which way it sits. Get all the holes on that leg sitting over their partners before you pick up a screw.

4. Start every screw before you tighten any of them. Get each one a few turns in first, so the leg can still shuffle slightly. If you drive the first screw fully home straight away, the leg is locked in place and the remaining holes can end up fractionally off. A few turns each, then go round again and tighten.

5. Tighten firmly, then stop. Pine is a softwood, and this is the one place a drill can catch you out. Once a screw is snug it's done — leaning on it after that can chew the hole out rather than pull the joint tighter. If you're using an impact driver, go gently on the last turn, or finish it by hand. Repeat for the remaining legs.

6. Turn it over. Lift rather than drag, and get someone to help you with the bigger pieces — a long dining table is more about awkwardness than weight. Once it's upright, remove the packaging and give it a moment on the floor to check it sits evenly.

If a hole doesn't line up

It's rare, but it does happen, and we'd much rather you stopped than pressed on.

Don't force a screw into a hole that isn't quite meeting, and please don't start drilling before you've spoken to us. Send us a message through our contact page — a photo of the underside is the quickest way for us to see what's going on — and we'll tell you exactly what to do next. It's usually a small fix, and we'd rather walk you through it properly than have you working it out on your own with a table upside down in the kitchen.

The same goes for anything that arrives looking wrong. Everything we sell is covered by our Lifetime Guarantee against faults, so if something isn't right, tell us and we'll sort it.

A note on uneven floors

The legs are a fixed height and aren't adjustable, which is worth knowing if you've got an older floor with a bit of movement in it. Most kitchen floors are flat enough that it never comes up. If yours isn't, a thin felt pad under the low foot is the usual answer, and it saves the slight rock you'd otherwise notice every time you put a mug down.

Once it's up

Give the top a wipe with something dry and soft before you start using it, and that's you finished.

Ten minutes is genuinely all it takes when everything lines up, which is most of the time. The pre-drilled holes are the reason — they're the difference between assembling furniture and just attaching legs to it. If you're weighing up whether to order and the assembly is what's giving you pause, I hope that settles it. You can see the full range of our dining tables whenever you're ready.

And if you get stuck at any point, message us. I'd far rather answer a question than hear afterwards that you struggled with it.

— Richard