How You Built An Awesome Coffee Table from Scratch

You wanted to build this table:

You obtained the following materials:

• 1 - Wooden pallet
• 1 - Pile of wood, preferably on a neighbor’s lawn. Use gloves to avoid those brown recluses.
• A bunch - Screws, preferably of the star drive and self-tapping variety
• 4 - Metal corner supports
• 4 - Large L-brackets
• 2 - Spray cans of grey primer
• 2 - Spray cans of hammered metallic black finish (exactly like the paint used on the couch frame)
• A handful - Finishing nails
• 1 - Bottle of wood glue
• 2 - 1”x3”x6’ lengths of cheap pine wood, hopefully straight
• 1 - 1”x3”x4’ length of cheap pine wood

You also needed, or should have had, the following tools:

• Belt Sander: Pallets are made of notoriously unfinished wood and need to be smoothed out
• Compound Miter Saw: For cutting angles and cuts across small distances
• Circular saw: For removing planks from pallets and longer cuts, since you, like me, probably don’t have a table saw (yet)
• Screwdrivers: Both electric (like a drill) and manual
• Hammer: Don’t hurt ‘em
• Pry bars: For getting nails out of pallets

An Aside: Creating lumber from a pallet

I could do an entire post just about working with pallets, but I won’t.

Pallets are, to put it mildly, pains in the ass to work with. They’re put together using spiral shanked nails, which are just not made to come out. Therefore, with pallet planks being so brittle and thin, you need to cut them off. Hence, the circular saw.

Once they’re cut from the ends, which loses 2-4 inches of overall length, you have to remove them from the middle support, which is just slightly less destructive than removing them from the side supports. You have the same nails, which gives you the same difficulties, but you don’t have the option of cutting them away.

I used so many different techniques involving various tools. Long story short, I pulled muscles that I didn’t even know I had. A lot in my legs, weirdly enough.

Once you get the planks off, you need to remove all the nails, since the supports will be part of this, too.

Step One: You Built the Frame

You cut the 1x3x6 at the 24” mark at a 45-degree angle, so that, when put together, the two halves will from a right angle, one arm being 4 feet, the other being 2 feet. You made identical cuts for the other board, and for the ends, so that you made a rectangle.

It is vitally important that your measurements be just a bit off so that you basically screw the whole thing up. That way, you have an excuse to look for a cover-up, in this case the triangular metal corner caps you see here:

Now you’ve cut the legs and mount them to the inside of the rectangular frame.

Between the legs, there are supports for the top slats. These can be made of anything. In this case, they are made from the beefy supports that give the pallets their 3D shape. These, also, are hardwood, and very difficult to work with. Plus, they’re too tall and you don’t have a table saw. So you hacked them lengthwise to halve their height, using a chisel. It was very hard and very thankless, and ugly and mostly successful.

Across the middle and ends, you fashion more supports. Between the legs on the ends, too. After you sanded the whole damned thing down, it now looks like this:

Step Two: Painting

It’s just naked wood and metal at this point, so priming is essential. You waste 2 cans of the soon-to-be-invisible paint to create this grey monster:

See how it rears up, as if mocking you? It knows you don’t have enough time in your day to finish up.

Anyway, you now sand the whole thing with 220-grit sandpaper until it is smooth. This helps the real paint go on better and give you a polished, finished feel, especially because the textured paint you’re using cannot be sanded.

So the frame is painted:

But your day’s not over, not by a long shot.

Step Three: The Deck

Here are your slats, all cleaned up, sanded, and wiped down:

How did you get here? Three hours of using an electric palm sander while sitting on a bench swing in front of a makeshift workspace and drinking a beer. There’s good and bad in all that.

After that, you applied a Satin Coat of Polycrylic.

A Word about Satin Coats of Polycrylic

Satin means “totally fucking invisible.” So, unlike a polyurethane, that leaves the wood with a smoky, wet finish that is just to die for, this does not give you any show for your efforts. And you need a few coats.

Here, the result is good, because the raw-looking (but waterproof and spillproof) slats contrast brilliantly with the hammered-metallic look of the frame.

Good job.

So you’ve fitted the slats as best you can, glued them and nailed them down. Then you’ve sanded the raw (looking) surface and applied a topcoat of polycrylic. The result:

Step Four: The Test

Now is the tricky part. Now you have 1/100th of your wife’s giant family over for dinner, and there’s not enough room anywhere to eat, so people use every available surface, including your brand-new, handcrafted coffee table. There’s kids, too.

And, due to awesome construction, materials, and petrochemicals, your new table is still awesome. And it matches your recycled couch, too.