Sofa Table

May, 2009—My wife wanted a sofa table that would be as wide as our new sofa, and dark in color to match the other furniture pieces in the living room. I decided to use some of the engineered hardwood flooring that was left over from when we had flooring installed. The “engineered” flooring is tongue and groove oak plywood planks in assorted lengths. The “wear layer” is a little thicker than an eighth of an inch, and pre-finished in a medium honey maple color. I used the flooring for the table top, and banded it in an unknown wood that I picked up years ago at a garage sale. The banding on the top is not stained, so maybe someone here can identify the wood species from the close-up photo.

The base is all made from aspen from Lowe’s. This was my first furniture project with Aspen and I found it easy to work with. The legs are glue-ups of two pieces of 2-by lumber, and the rails are 4-by lumber. The tricky part of assembly was in slanting the legs 3-degrees in both directions. The power miter saw was set at 3-degrees when cutting all the rails to length. To keep the rails perpendicular to the floor and top, it is necessary to be very careful to properly position the legs to the rails before joining them. I drew 3-degree lines on the legs to make alignment easier. I used Minwax Dark Walnut stain, and brushed on two coats. I really let it soak in good before rubbing off the excess.

This was also my first project using the Kreg pocket hole joinery. The table top has Titebond II glue in the tongue and grooves, along with more than enough pocket holes. Guess I went a little wild with my new Kreg jig!! :-)

The table top is 17-inches by 76-inches, and it stands proud of the rails on all sides by 1 and 3/8-inches. There are plastic glides on the leg bottoms. The table height is 31.5-inches. This was a fun project because I got to use up some scrap wood, got to try out pocket joinery, and made a piece of sturdy furniture that we needed. There are 3-coats of rub-on satin poly on the base and 4-coats on the top. The whole project took about 2-days.

-- Art | Bradenton, Florida