Rustic Coffee Table

  So if you remember, about a month ago, Hannah and I made our first DIY piece of furniture and made ourselves a couple of nightstands.

You can read about that adventure here. They turned out so well that this time I decided we would make ourselves a coffee table. We've needed one/wanted one since we got married three years ago and now with my new found love of furniture making, I decided I would just make one.
   I found this picture on Pinterest.

   I loved the look of the table, the stained top, the painted sides, the solid look of the table. I found the plans for it and turns out they were Ana White plans. I should have known. The biggest problem with this gorgeous table was that it was too big for our living room. Hannah and I are renting an apartment right now and while we could fit the full size table in our living room, I didn't want one that big as I tend to do lots of activities in the living room. (Work out, play with the dog, etc...) 

   Thanks to helping my dad build his house and add on to other peoples houses, I had a little bit of experience with planning and building so I decided to just downsize the plans to fit what I wanted for our living room. I recently acquired a notebook from my buddy Dave and it has become the place for me to scribble down plans and thoughts that I have on furniture making. (I may be guilty of doodling plans during church. . .) 

   

I mean check out my sweet sketches.

   For those of you who don't know, I can draw about as well as Hannah can sing. That means, not very well. However, while I was doodling during church, Hannah was actually impressed with my plans. Or at least she faked like she was. On the left are some of the plans for the next project that we are working on!

   Again, we loaded up the back of the Explorer with the wood from Home Depot and headed down to my parents for a grill out. 

Rocky all loaded up with the wood.

    I got all the wood cut for the table and for my next project and then my dad helped me to use the joiner do run down the inside joints of the table top so there wouldn't be an indent in the table top and the boards would join up flush. One day I would love to buy one of those but for the time being they are a little out of my budget and I have no where to store on. We had a great time grilling and eating food with my parents and my little sister and her husband before the latter two moved out to Minnesota for his new job. 

   Once we got home with everything all cut, I was ready to start assembling the next day. With the use of my Kreg Jig, it was pretty simple to get everything put together. That thing is seriously awesome. Hannah left for work one day and came back home to see the table all assembled. It stayed that was for a few days until I had some time to stain it. We had planned to go camping for the weekend but it rained all weekend, and for the next week, and for this weekend. . . so last weekend I decided it could be furniture day. 

   This time I opted to stain in the garage, last time I did it in the kitchen. Oops. We used the same Minwax Dark Walnut stain with Polyurethane finish that we used for the nightstands because we had tons of extra and I loved the look of how the nightstands turned out. I had debated painting the sides like they were in the first picture I saw of the table, but the legs just had so much character with the grain and knots that I didn't want to hide under paint.

   We are pretty happy with how it turned out. And we love having the functionality of a coffee table. Rocky doesn't like that he no longer gets to lay right at our feet though. Poor guy. It's a rough life for a dog. Let me know what you think! A friend at work told me that I should make furniture for people. Ha. Maybe one day, for now I have enough projects of my own.