Our project: a new coffee table

So a couple of months back, a local Crate&Barrel location closed and we bought some of their shelving to in the hopes of making it into a new coffee table.


We put the three boards together to make the basic shape.


Unfortunately, the table made with just 3 boards wasn't sturdy enough, so we needed to add a shelf to stabilize it. The board needed staining, because it was unfinished.


Because the top board was scarred and had a lot of holes that needed filling, we decided to paint a pattern on the tabletop to mask that.


First, we had to sand the finish off the top, which made a huge dusty mess all over our apartment.


Then we had to mask off the tabletop for how we wanted our pattern.


We decided to go with a simple geometric design.


We went with black paint to match our bookshelves.


Even though we don't play many games,


we decided making a game board on the table would be fun.


Once we were done painting,


we had to put the shelf in.


Then a number of coats of polyurethane followed,


and finally we ended up with our new coffee table.