Coffee Table
About a year ago, my wife went hunting to nearly every furniture store in the area and online to look for an entertainment center for the family room. She found variations of what she wanted but not exactly what she was looking for. Eventually she contacted a Amish Furniture store we’ve used in the past and ordered a custom entertainment center. Believe it or not, the price was nearly the same as what the big furniture stores charge for the fiber board junk ones they sell. We wanted a matching coffee table but the price was a bit high for that and it was something I figured I could build myself. We did order a top for it though so I wouldn’t have to try to match the wood from the entertainment center. (My wife’s smart idea) 🙂
So my wife sketched out the design and basic dimensions for the coffee table and I took those drawings and mocked it up in Sketchup so I would have a 3D verion of it to refer to.
One of the first challenges I have here in Florida is getting good lumber. Things like maple and walnut that are prevelant in the North are a bit harder and more expensive down here. I was able to get the maple I needed but had to splice a few boards together to get the sizes I needed.
So my next challenge was how to attach everything together. Anyone can slap things together with nails or screws but I wanted to have nice clean look and not show any modern hardware. I decided to use wooden dowels. There was a bit of a learning curve but I figured it out pretty quickly.
The next issue was what type of hinge to use for the doors. Again I wanted to stay away from modern hardware so I found some antique style spring snap hinges. Once I got the hinges I noticed that they were all the same and there should be right handed ones and left handed ones. Called the vendor and find out they only make one side so you have to flip the other side to make them work. I’ll spare you the details but this caused me to have to get creative. In the end it worked out fine but what a pain…
The last hurdle was painting it… First of all I really hate painting, and even more so painting wood, but it made sense for this project. I always have a tough time geting the finish to be smooth, so I decided this time i’d try something new… Paint Sprayer… I’ve had a paint gun for my air compressor for years but never had the guts to try to use it. I wen to youtube and learned all I could about it and I have to say, it came out pretty well. The biggest issue I had was that I was spraying white paint on light wood so it was hard to tell if I got full coverage until it was dry and I could see it in good lighting. Anyway, you can see in the photo that the coffee table matched the entertainment center pretty well, but I think that will be the last one of those I build for a while!
