My younger daughter and her SO recently asked for a small coffee table for their "diminutive" apartment. They even provided plans...
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My daughter absolutely wanted a shelf under this table as they have such limited storage space and have some things that will fit there nicely.
So, ok...the overall sizing was good to have (and I took their inches and turned them into my metric), but oh, my...that was going to be too boring of a design for me. LOL Since I was going to generally use scraps and what I had lying about for this project, I decided to let the wood tell me what kind of table design it wanted to be. The legs were to be made from a length of "rock hard" 2x4 SYP that I've had for a very long time. Leaving them straight and vertical would not solve the boring part, but...angling/splaying them kinda brought to mind a few videos I've watched recently about some mid-century inspired pieces. Not wanting to get too complicated, the splay is only in the longer dimension. I worked things out from there with the top rails set back with about a 6mm reveal, a taper on the legs, roundovers to soften things up and so forth. I built the base first and then created the top to fit. If I had thicker material available, I would have done a bottom bevel on the top, but that was not to be, so the top just got roundovers, too...probably good as I suspect there will be occasional, um...leg contact. Their space is that small. And for those who prefer to cringe, the evil pocket screws and glue hold this together...and I can stand on it, not that I expect anyone to be doing that kind of thing.
Since there are three or four different varieties of softwoods in this build, going dark was the way to pull it together. Brown leather dye followed by dark walnut gel stain took care of that deed. Since I was in "economy mode", the base and the initial coats of clear on the top were from a partial quart of Polycrylic satin that needed to get used up. I sprayed additional coats of EM6000 satin over that on the top.
Final result...looks lighter in these photos as I had to kick up the shadows in Lightroom to show the lower structure details. The actual color is quite dark. I'm pretty pleased with it. There are a few minor things that I wish were better; some because of using scrap material and some because of not taking a little more time which is "my bad".
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I'm sure that Les and Dan will get a lot of use out of this piece over the years.
Here's a few more photos during the process.
Prior to finishing
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My fancy spray booth. It kinda requires good weather to use but it's all I have until the new shop building is up. This was actually the first spraying I did since moving over a year ago other than some rattle can stuff on guitar projects
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Reveal detail and you can better see how dark the finish is, too.
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