pinterest lied to me. again.

A few weeks ago my 4yo informed me that Santa was going to bring him a train table this year. I cringed at the news for a number of reasons. About $150 reasons. Plus, the coffee table works just fine. Plus, Hubs and I have had 2+ years of trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains and we thought Christmas would be a good opportunity to introduce a bit of variety in his little life.

But there's Santa and Christmas and the desires of his sweet little heart and the absolute magic of childhood and Christmas only lasts for so many years and so... I'm left with a train table. 

But real magic would be coughing up $150 for said train table. If I was smart I would have Black Friday shopped, Craigslist stalked, hunted and prayed to find a real one, but I didn't. I turned straight to a Pinterest DIY train table. Ha! 

One of the first pictures shows this short white Ikea Lack hack. The woman has this amazing track arrangement with hills and turns and it looks like an absolute dream. The cost of the table? $20. I can swallow $20. A few clicks and it was on it's way to me. 

The giant box showed up a few days later and the 4yo told his dad exactly what was in that box. "Look dad. It's my train table for Christmas."

Because it was only $20 I thought I'd get a new bridge track to go with it. In my head it was going to look exactly like the one on Pinterest. I mean how could it not? It wasn't like decorating a cake or some kind of craft ( I have stories about these attempts and fails). I'm rather good at constructing tracks. I've had a good 2+ years of weekly practice and we have at least 100 of them...

So yesterday I pulled out the table and got to work planning this amazing little track for my boy. Only... 

Seriously. This is the best I can do after an hour. I've tried everything and I can't seem to get them to fit. I've decided that either this Pinterest lady is using a smaller set of tracks, or her table is the larger Lack table that is more than $20. 

So. Here I am. One week out from Christmas and...  

I don't know quite what to do. 

UPDATE:

So. I resolved my problem like this: 

I went ahead and painted the table, but with roads. I used the Melissa and Doug toys I'd snagged at 50% sales over the last couple years out of my friend-birthday-gift-stash-pile and picked up a $6 set of CAT construction trucks. 

The final verdict is: it's a hit. Both my boys kept going back to it today to play. And the 4yo thought my paint job was pretty awesome. So overall it was a WIN. 

Here's the breakdown in case you're curious.

The table: IKEA $20

The paints: $2.50(ish)

The Melissa and Doug City cars and traffic sign set $10 (from the closet)

The Melissa and Doug car-carrying semi-truck $10 (also from the closet)

The CAT construction trucks $6

The deer figurines + bridge $8? $9?

So. All total $56. Not great, but considering I had the $20 of cars stuff on hand I didn't have to go too far past my desired budget. 

I will say though that I need to figure out how to seal the paint. It got pretty scratched up today.