Building a Coffee Table

I hope everyone had a wonderful and happy holiday this year. With a few extra days off of work, I spent some time working on a new build. This time, a coffee table to match the dining room table. I got the plans from Ana White’s website, much like the dining room table, but I did do some slight modifications. I changed the overall size of the table, since ours needed to be a bit smaller, and I also changed out the legs. She calls for 4×4 legs, which for a coffee table just looked huge, so I used 2×3′s instead.

I headed over to Lowe’s to get my wood, and all in all, it cost me about $20. I had a few spare 2×4 strips, so that helped, but building a coffee table for $20 is not a bad thing. After cutting all the wood to size, I began to lay out the project.

Note, that doesn’t include the 2×4 strips that serve as the table top. Those I cut after I put together the legs and built the frame. Here is a very important hint when building this table, and I wish I had paid more attention to it. It’s very important to get the straightest boards you can find. I wish I had a lumber yard close by that sold furniture grade lumber, but I don’t. So a few of the 2×4′s I bought were practically useless due to some bowing. It took me a long time to get the boards cut properly and placed in due to the warping. Once I did, I screwed everything in using my kreg jig pocket holes and secured it up. I also added 2 45 degree pieces on each end to match the look on the dining room table.

Once everything was all assembled, I started to put on the stain. I stained it exactly the same as the dining room table, which was one coat of minwax’s English Chestnut, followed by one coat of minwax’s gunstock.

Sorry about the bad shadow, the house was blocking the sun. Now that the table is stained and drying in our basement, all that is left is to put a few coats of polyurethane on it and we’ll be good to go. That’s my plan for next weekend, assuming that the weather is decent enough to drag it outside again. Once it’s poly’d, it will find its new home in our living room. Huzzah!