FETES EN FLEUR: We made a coffee table

5.20.2012

We made a coffee table

Back in March, my husband I finally got around to making an outdoor coffee table. Ours was falling apart and I didn't want to buy another...not knowing how much longer we might stay in our current house and would we be able to use it in a new home?! I spotted a pin on pinterest.com of wooden shipping pallets made into a coffee table and thought that was perfect. Totally functional, but not much money put into it. I found the said pallets back in November....so they've been in our carport for a while now.

The instructions on Pinterest were ok, but not terribly specific. First we went to pick out the stain, so we could stain the pallets and supports, before we put it together. We got our Pratt & Lambert stain at Little Hardware. The color is driftwood grey and the stain was semi-transparent. You will want 2 coats...so staining took one day for everything to dry. We also picked up the 4x4 there and conveniently went by Table Mattes to check on the construction and found Dennis using a radial arm saw. We had him cut our 4x4 in 6" sections. Perfect!!

Staining

Then we went home and started staining. I didn't like Little Hardware's selection of casters and L brackets, so I went to Home Depot and got some sweet steel casters with locking brakes - key for a coffee table not to move around with a slight push. The L brackets were about 2". The casters were 3". It may depend on what size pallets that you get, but we ended up using 6 of the 4x4s for supports since ours was rectangular - but most pallets are square so you should only need 4. We got 4 casters and 20 L brackets (4 on each corner and 2 on center supports. This project does require a drill and a circular saw and requires 2 days for the staining! But we spent less than $100. The greatest expense was probably the gallon of stain for $45.