In common with most boats, caravans and motorhomes my table is fitted on Desmo Legs. These are 60mm (2.5 inches) diameter metal legs that fit into sockets in the floor and on the underside of the table. My boat had been fitted with the underside of the table sockets on the floor as well as in their normal place, this left me with two 60mm high lumps of metal in the floor if I took the table down. These didn’t look good and always seemed to be in the ideal place to trip you up so I decided to install the more functional and aesthetically pleasing recessed sockets into the new flooring. In the process of fitting the new flooring I found there are metal ribs running across the width of the boat every metre of so. These give extra strength to the base plate, this is good because it keeps the water out but guess where one of them is. Yep, right under one of the Desmo legs, obviously this is why it had the surface mounted sockets on the floor instead of the recessed ones.

After due consideration I decided I much preferred the recessed sockets so I opted to move the position of the leg affected by the steelwork. After much careful measurement I set about my lovely new floor with a holecutter.

Only once drilled could I be absolutely sure that the holes missed all the steel and everything would fit, they did. The recessed sockets look a lot better than the old ones, well worth the effort.

The other result of the new sockets was that the table was now about 50mm (2 inches) lower than it used to be, the sockets for the legs are now below floor level not above it as they used to be. I could just fit my legs under the table but I certainly wouldn’t want to try to get up in a hurry. A quick check on the price of new, longer legs persuaded me that was not the way to deal with the problem. Desmo legs come in pre-cut lengths which cannot be altered, they have a taper at each end and the sockets have the equivalent taper to accept the leg. If you take a hacksaw to the end of one of these legs it will end up not fitting in the socket properly. The easiest option for me was to put spacers between the top sockets and the bottom of the table. I removed the sockets from the underneath of the table, fitted suitable pieces of timber, 44x96mm (what used to be called 4×2), and reattached the sockets to these. I once again have a usable table at a sensible height. Now there is no excuse for not setting the computer up and getting on with some writing.