Sofa Table

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm very accident prone. I broke my toe by running into a box. I've sprained my ankle while pulling my pants up. I also walk into door jams quite often. My sensory perception is just a bit off.

My living room is rather small. For about 9 years I have had a lovely coffee table in front of my couch. I got it when my cousin moved from Detroit to Chicago. I bought the couches, coffee and end table from her. Well I finally got tired of hitting my knee on this table.

Here are some shots of the coffee table. Look at those sharp corners!

Now here's a photo of just two of the injuries that I've suffered recently from this coffee table.They are small and healing but it happens ALL THE TIME.

I decided that with such a small living room and such large furniture it was time to get rid of the coffee table. Right now it's just chilling in our spare room but it will probably be retired to a corner in the basement soon.

I wanted something though to put drinks on if someone is sitting on the couch and that's when I found console tables and sofa tables online. What I really want is just a long skinny thing behind the couch. It was much easier to just make one than go out and buy one.

I went to Lowes and bought a 6x1 board and had them cut it to the length of my couch which I measured before I went to the store. In the lumber area I found these awesome table legs for only $2.99 each. I bought 6 of those because I knew with a table so long I would need legs in the middle to provide support. After assembling it, I was very happy I did that because they really helped it go from wobbly to pretty good.

The legs were a little tall so I cut 3 inches off each side of them to make them the right height. Then I broke out my awesome new drill and drilled some holes and screwed the legs on! After that was done I put some wood filler on over the screws to hide them, let it dry and then sanded it lightly.

 

 You can see that I did a pilot hole so the screws would sit into the wood and be even and smooth. Also if you look closely you can see where I started to drill a hole but moved it over about an inch. 

 Good old Elmers wood filler works great. I used it for the kitchen cart as well.

 Here they are covered.

Next was time to stain it. Originally I wanted it to be a nice deep rich wood looking color. However, I'm cheap and lazy. I had left over black stain from my kitchen cart that I made and I figured I would just use that instead of letting it dry up and go to waste.

It turned out perfect! So far I'm happy with it. It really opens up the room  not having the big coffee table there.