Now you see me

Now you don’t

You’ve been one of eight guests for dinner in a very modern eco-house. You all dined on a lovely heavy wooden table standing on four polished steel pillars; all very much in keeping with the modern house. You help to clear away the last plate into the kitchen and when you return 10 seconds later the table has completely disappeared. What? Your hosts were in the kitchen too so where has it gone?
OK, here’s the secret of the Original Twist magic table, and strangely, to make one table disappear you need 2 tables.
To start with imagine the original floor – for me, wide lime-washed oak boards – and this is where the table starts off; at this moment it is the floor. Underneath there is a small pit just big enough to accommodate the 4 steel pillars the bases of which screw into a rectangular frame which is raised and lowered by screw jacks and an electric motor. To go techie for a moment, there is an upper frame too with big DU bushes in blocks to steady the legs. When the floor/table is raised up you don’t see a hole in the floor because immediately under the first table there is a second identical floor section with 4 holes through which the legs move. When the legs base frame comes up to the top of the pit it pushes the second floor up to exactly the right height and the illusion is complete. The table has appeared from nowhere and the floor is exactly like it was before.
Hygiene would be an issue but with a rubber backed rug over the floor the table will never have been walked on and double protection would be afforded by a tablecloth as well.
Servicing can all be done from above and would be even easier done from below if the pit had a side hatch accessed from the floor below.
There is more to this concept that the sheer theatre of it. The easy removal of a substantial table makes grand entertaining in a downsized house all very possible without having that old hat idea of a largely unused dining room.
There is a business waiting to be started here. Precast pit and frames etc waiting to be fitted to the floor. If you are interested please contact me on the form below.

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