I almost kept myself too busy and forgot to post something tonight. However, I did actually forget a key piece of wood on my trip to Lowe’s this evening for my new project, so I guess I can take the time to talk about my recently completed project.
To provide a little back story: when I moved into my apartment, I didn’t have much in the way of furniture to furnish the whole thing. I had enough to get by, a couch, a desk to put my TV on, and a bookshelf. I decided that instead of running to Ikea or some other place to get some quick furniture, I decided instead to construct my own furniture. I have limited carpentry skills, but I have just enough tools to be effective.
The really good news, is that there are many free plans available on the internet. The first order of business was the construction of a TV stand- for which I modified a set of plans I found. I constructed a pretty good TV stand, although it has it's flaws that I will be keeping to myself for the current time. In addition, it also left me a nice pile of leftover wood. So prior to beginning the next part of what I calling Phase One of construction (a TV stand, coffee table, and a pub style table), I wanted to try my hand at designing my own project and hopefully expanding my carpentry repertoire.
A couple things I wanted to work on was using a mitre saw to make angles and also making a tabletop out of different pieces to make a sort of design. So I designed the top to be a collection of pieces of 1”x2” on a piece of plywood surrounded by 2”x2” pieces with 45 degree angle cuts at the edges. As I tested out the results, here is what it looked like:
In theory, the rest of the table should have been easy, just slap on four legs and it should be good to go. However, I wanted to put a shelf near the bottom and have it attach rather seamlessly to the legs. It took me a lot longer to figure out how to do that so that the look would be something I would like. In the end, I decided to get a bit more practice with the mitre saw and cut angles in more pieces of 1”x2” trim to surround a shelf. Then I cut notches into the legs of 2”x2” wood. I didn’t really measure my notches, so my legs are not that snug to the shelf that “surrounds” it.
Then it was just a matter of assembling the pieces into my end table. I actually decided to stain the table prior to putting the pieces of the top into their final position. That way I wouldn’t have to worry too much about trying to get the stain into the cracks between the pieces.
I think I should I have left the table go with one coat of stain. However the pieces I had used for the legs were not of the best quality and the I didn’t like the way they were looking. So the table ended up being perhaps a bit darker than I wanted. I then applied applied two coats of the clear coat to protect the finish. Now I just need some sort of plant to put on the bottom as a decoration or something.
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