Yesterday I shared a picture of our base and you saw a picture of me sanding down the boards that were used for the top of the table. After I sanded the boards, it was time to make some cuts and nail them into the top of the table. First, Eric screwed down a scrap piece of plywood that we had in our basement to give himself a straight edge to maintain the center line. As he was nailing in the boards, he made sure to butt them up against the piece of plywood. Here's a picture of one side almost completely covered:
As you can see from the above picture, we decided to go with a herringbone pattern for our coffee table. Eric cut all of the boards at a 20 degree angle with his miter saw. We decided that we wanted the boards to come together to make a point (hence the herringbone pattern), but we wanted our points to be a little more subtle (which is why we did a 20 degree angle). Here's a picture of Eric hard at work:
From the above picture, you can tell that the boards we put on top of the table are hanging off the frame. We will take care of those a few pictures down, so keep reading. :)
Little by little, Eric nailed in all of the boards to the top of the table. Here's what the table looked like after nailing in the boards:
And here is a side view:
Once the top was on, we cut, sanded, and screwed in the legs of the table. They are made from thicker pallet boards and are 16 inches long, which makes the table a bit taller than our current coffee table. Here you can see a close up of the legs and side of the table.
I love to look at the top of our table. It makes my heart smile.
The next step was to trim the top boards (they were hanging off the frame quite a bit) so that they aligned with the frame and each other. Our neighbor saved the day once again by letting us borrow his circular saw (which meant that we didn't have to spend money buying one). With the circular saw, Eric trimmed the boards flush with the frame.
Here's the table post circular saw:
We then decided that we wanted to frame in the sides of the table (if you scroll back up 5 photos, you can see that our original base is showing on the sides still). We had 4 long boards to use for the frame. We came across a few problems when we went to use these boards. Our first problem was that the boards weren't quite long enough to cover the length of the table. To solve this problem, we figured that we would just cut the boards so that we had two long pieces on each side that met in the middle (making there one joint on each side). Unfortunately we discovered that we didn't have enough boards to do this. We had to get creative. Our next option was to put three boards of equal size on each long side of the table (making two joints on each side). Thankfully we had just the right amount of boards to do this option. Here's what the table looks like after framing it in:
Looks pretty good, right?! We were impressed! I will note that one step we left out until we framed in the outside was cutting little pieces to fill the corners of the top of the table. Here's a couple of before pictures, which show the missing pieces:
And after filling in the corners:
Ta-da! We now have a handmade coffee table made out of pallets. It feels good to have a new table to replace our old one with the wonky legs. We love that our hands made this table and we think it'll be something cool to tell our kids about someday. Our first piece of furniture that we made together. We are anxious to get some use out of our new table, but first we need to go back and sand the table once more and then we plan on staining it. For now, we get to sit and stare at our rustic beauty. Check out these cup coasters hubby made out of scrap wood!
We are VERY excited about our new table! What do you think of our table?! Tell us in the comment section below! :)
I love this table!!! I may just have to try this out myself :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Britt!! It was a very cool project to take on! We'd never worked with pallets before, so it was interesting. We are staining the table now, so I'm hoping to be back tomorrow with the ultimate reveal since it'll be 100% done then!! :)
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