Padding your center insert

Here I am cutting our foam that will be glued onto our center inserts.

We decided to spend a few extra bucks and go with a quarter inch spill resistant foam.  After all, we've put enough effort, time and energy into the tables, so we don't want the playing surface ruined by a spilled drink. 

We found our foam at Just Fabric in Omaha, so that was one item we didn't need to specialty order.

Our material was just the right size for two inserts, so there wasn't a lot of room for error in the cutting.

We just wanted enough material to cover the surface, and weren't going to wrap any foam around the inserts for the same reason Junell chose.  We didn't know if there'd be enough room with the foam wrapping around to comfortable get the insert to fit.  Like Junell this was just our choice.

Here's a pic of the playing surface cutouts laying on top of their respective foam pieces. 

Nothing too special there.

Here's a side view showing the foam on top of our wooden insert.

We just used some spray adhesive on the foam surface as well as the wood, and put both together.  Make sure you don't have any air bubbles or folds in your foam as you glue it down.  That would obviously be bad.

We did find that we had a lot of checking, and re-gluing to finish.  There were quite a few spots that came up since we didn't have enough adhesive sprayed on certain spots. 

Just keep gluing the foam down if it wants to peel up in certain spots.

We found that the corners were the most difficult.  So, we'd use shoes, hands, and feet to hold down sections that wanted to peel. 

Don't be shy with the adhesive.

Use a razor blade to trim up any excess foam coming off your insert. 

Don't rush during this part, and try to make your foam as flush to the wood as possible.  This will pay off when you cover your surface with your material.