Building a Coffee Table

Almost a year ago, I was browsing the craft section of Pinterest and came across this really cool looking coffee table.  The couple had found this old door, cleaned it up a bit, attached some legs and voila! A really cool vintage coffee table.  I immediately fell in love with it, and decided to do it myself.  So I spent the next month or so scouring thrift shops and Habitat for Humanity's Restore in order to find the perfect door.  I finally found it one day in the back of Restore, and promptly bought it for $21.  It was old, and made out of solid wood.  This project would be done almost entirely at my parents' house, since they have the space and all the fun power tools a girl could ever want.

I started off by stripping most of the paint off of the top of the door.  Sections of it were peeling and cracking off, and I didn't want to worry about possible lead paint chips coming off later down the line.  I decided to leave some of the old paint (that didn't come off with the first two rounds of paint stripping) around the edges so when I distressed the new paint, the old paint (which is a different color) would show through and give it some depth.

Then we loaded the door into my dad's car and drove it to a friend's to use their table saw to cut the door down to a better size.

After cutting it down, we had to secure the top piece of wood to make sure the rest of the door, which was fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, wouldn't fall apart.  We did this using an awesome tool called a Kreg jig.  It lets you drill a hole at a specific angle to secure two pieces of wood together - it's a really strong joint, and the holes are easily hidden.

testing out the new Kreg jig

preparing to drill the hole for the screw

power tools are lots of fun :)

After the pieces were secure, I got some crackle medium to put on the panels.  I wanted the new paint to crack, so it would look older and show the old paint or wood underneath.  Crackle medium is the easiest way to do it.  Once it dried, I re-painted the door.

After the paint dried, I began to distress it.  This part was a lot of fun - I dropped a hammer on the door, hit it was a crowbar, scratched it up, and basically just enjoyed beating the wood up to give it more texture.  Then I used a little wood stain to darken some of the edges and fill some of the new dents in the door.  After that, I sealed it with 3 coats of polyurethane.

all ready for polyurethane!

All of this had been done over about 4 months of various weekends at my parents'.  After I finished the top coat of polyurethane, the door sat in my parents garage until this summer.  I had sidetracked by other things in life, and I was stuck on what to do for table legs.  I had found some affordable options online, but nothing I saw really struck me as being right.  On spare days this summer, I went back to me parents to finish up with the polyurethane - I had to do several coats on the back of the door to make sure the old paint on that side wouldn't chip off.  Then the past couple weeks, I finally made a decision on the frame and got to work.  My dad and I bought some lumber from Lowe's - the wood was the same size as some of the more expensive table legs, but unfinished (meaning not sanded or stained), and about twice as long.  We bought two of these and cut them in half, which only cost us $10.

Building the frame was so much fun!  My mom wisely suggested that we miter the corners of the frame, to give it a finished edge.

lining up the frame

securing the legs

We used the Kreg jig for the frame.  The outer frame is there to provide stability for the legs.  We quickly discovered some warp in the wood, which meant we had to get a little creative with attaching the legs.  We used shims (slim, angled slices of wood) in between some of the legs and the frame to make sure that all the legs were straight and level when attached.

Once the frame was built, I did 3 coats of wood stain, followed by 2 coats of polyurethane to seal the stain.  The polyurethane took a long time to dry since it's so humid here.  After it was dry, we brought it back inside, placed it on top of the door, marked the frame's position, then drilled holes in the frame where it would be screwed to the door.  We were lucky - the frame sat level on the door, so we didn't have use any more shims.  We clamped the frame onto the door and screwed it in.  For a final touch, we put felt pads on to the bottoms of the legs.

And here's the final result: the coffee table in its new home :)