My First Attempt At Building A Table

So last week I decided I was going to build a table for my bedroom. And I don’t mean an Ikea table. I had seen some ideas on Pinterest, and thought, why not? Well, It was a little more difficult than I had imagined.

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Supplies

On a Tuesday afternoon, my mom found a pin on Pinterest depicting a small table that had storage underneath. Which, really is a must have for my small studio apartment-like room. She informed me that it was a Home Depot DIY project (not a sponsor), and that we could go pick up the supplies that night.

This was one of the few times I didn’t wait 3-4 business days to make a decision. I got ready to go, and to my surprise, my dad had already planned on going there that night. So he reluctantly waited for his two tag-alongs.

Beginning the Work

Shopping for the supplies with my mom was actually pretty fun. We found our crates and screws. Then we had a nice gentleman cut a few pieces of wood for us. The project ended up a bit more costly than anticipated. But, I had never really done anything like this before, and I thought it would be something cool to add to the experience list.

So we brought all of the pieces home, and set them outside on my dad’s work bench. As we looked at them, my dad (being an experienced builder), began going into all of the steps necessary to make these hunks of wood house-worthy. Now, the instructions on the Home Depot website were simple. A little stain, some screws, and a few hours. Well, my dad had other ideas. Not to say they weren’t good ideas, they just added a little more work.

The Router

As my dad frequently says, “If you don’t router the edges, it just looks unfinished.” I thought about it for a minute. Eventually I agreed with him, and we broke out the router to finish and round off the edges of my cut boards.

I was in a bit of a “get things done” mood that night, so we got cracking right away. I have used the router before, (probably a year or two ago) but it didn’t take long for me to start remembering things like pressure, and keeping the blade against the wood. After I was done with the edges, I had to step back and take a moment to admire my work. Then I also realized I was covered head to toe in sawdust, and I had gotten this far in the project wearing 5 year old flip flops. Not exactly working attire.

Sanding

After the edges were done, my dad was pleasantly surprised to hear I still had a bit of work left in me. So, without skipping a beat, he pulls out his electric sander. He put a new piece of gritty paper on the handheld machine just for me. Then handed the device over.

Out of all his tools, I think this is the one I am most familiar with. I once spent 3 hours sanding a bar table with him. So my sawdust covered self bent to the ground and began scraping away at all of the tough edges of every piece of wood I had for the project. I would have kept going, but the sun had other ideas. I called it a night, and started back up the next day.

Finishing

Routered, sanded, and primed for staining, I wasted no time moving to the next step of my project. This was one of the parts I had never done before, so thankfully my dad explained a few things to me. Especially wait times.

Assembling the Parts

Well, it could have gone better. I waited for my dad to come home from work, and when he did, we went straight to the table. Bringing the parts into the garage, I was able to see all of the spots I had missed and messed up on, leaving me a bit uneasy.

Then, after we screwed on the wheels, crates, and lid. I had before me, a monstrosity. My dad reassured me that wood was hard to work with, and that I had done good for my first try. He said he liked it. At that I sarcastically offered to sell it to him. I guess I’m just a perfectionist. Dad and I tried to fix a few of the oddities in this creation, which made it look a little better, but from this day forth, I will always be reminded of how much I hate polyurethane.

That’s it!

This was my experience building a storage table. It was a lot of work, with blood, sweat and tears in it. If I could do anything different though, I would tell myself to not expect perfection. It is a perfectly fine, working table. And all in all, I did enjoy putting it together. Not to mention having this experience, will help me later on if I decide to do another project like this.

Thank you so much for reading this blog post! I post every other Tuesday, with new or odd experiences, so please subscribe and/or check out my other posts. I hope enjoy reading about my other experiences as I continue to explore the world one step at a time!