scott spencer
01-03-2006, 11:07 AM
My Brother's MIL's Coffee Table From H-E-doubetoothpicks!
Last week I posted about agreeing to shorten an alleged cherry coffee table for my brother's MIL and then regretting agreeing to it. It turned out to be birch veneer over junk, which made it no where near as fun, posed a few additional probs, and will never ever look as good as cherry. I decided to forge on with it, as I was sure that they'd be happy with whatever they got, plus if she didn't like it, my brother would have to hear about it and not me! :D The challenge was kind of interesting too...:rolleyes:
The request was to shorten the table, and turn the top into drop leaves. The legs were mounted to a rectangular shelf pedestal which needed to be shortened about 8". Since it turned out to be veneer, I had to trim the routed hardwood edge off, trim the rectangular base, then reattach the routed edge as molding, then reattach the legs. Note the elliptical shape of the top...that required that I attach the top to a temporary rectangular subbase as a reference before crosscutting the ends. Next I needed to rout the drop leaf contours in the junk board ends...ugly at best...stained of course. :cool: Then I needed to add some pullouts to support the leaves when raised. I touched up the wear marks with a furniture marker and gave it a coat of tung oil to shine it up a bit and detract from the nasty looking seams on the leaves. It looks "OK"...I'm glad it's not going to a paying customer or my MIL for that matter! ;)
Last week I posted about agreeing to shorten an alleged cherry coffee table for my brother's MIL and then regretting agreeing to it. It turned out to be birch veneer over junk, which made it no where near as fun, posed a few additional probs, and will never ever look as good as cherry. I decided to forge on with it, as I was sure that they'd be happy with whatever they got, plus if she didn't like it, my brother would have to hear about it and not me! :D The challenge was kind of interesting too...:rolleyes:
The request was to shorten the table, and turn the top into drop leaves. The legs were mounted to a rectangular shelf pedestal which needed to be shortened about 8". Since it turned out to be veneer, I had to trim the routed hardwood edge off, trim the rectangular base, then reattach the routed edge as molding, then reattach the legs. Note the elliptical shape of the top...that required that I attach the top to a temporary rectangular subbase as a reference before crosscutting the ends. Next I needed to rout the drop leaf contours in the junk board ends...ugly at best...stained of course. :cool: Then I needed to add some pullouts to support the leaves when raised. I touched up the wear marks with a furniture marker and gave it a coat of tung oil to shine it up a bit and detract from the nasty looking seams on the leaves. It looks "OK"...I'm glad it's not going to a paying customer or my MIL for that matter! ;)