Our friend Julie gave us a small, round table at a garage sale this past Saturday. Elise and I were both kind of eyeing the table, and it wasn’t until the end of the sale that we decided to run it across the street to see if we could repurpose this table, that once used to be a children’s activity table, into an end table for our living room. We decided it looked pretty good and would fit really well into our living room with a little touching up and raising it a couple inches. We offered to buy the table from Julie, but she wouldn’t let us. So we got the table at the friends and family discount.
That afternoon, while looking at the table, I decided I would try to build a drawer for it. I jotted down what I thought I needed and Maly and I headed over to Home Depot. We bought a pine 1×12, a 1×4, a couple 1×3’s, a package of 2″ wood screws, a drawer pull, 2 packs of sandpaper, a 20″ drawer slide kit, 4 milled coffee table legs and some rubber glides for the bottoms of the table legs. All of these little things came to a total of $94.98.
I first unscrewed the original legs and replaced them with my new milled legs and took the table from the garage and into the living room. Elise insisted that the table was too short. I lugged the table back into the garage and cut out 1.5″ block “risers” out of leftover lumber to give the table a lift kit to Elise’s specifications. After that I cut out the drawer facade from the existing frame, built a frame for the drawer, attached the drawer slides and then built a 2″ deep drawer (just to store our remotes).
I woke up the next morning and spent the better part of the day sanding and refinishing. After a full-day’s worth of work and $95, we have a nice, new, “free” end table.
Nice job, Josh! It really looks nice! You’re becoming quite the woodworker. It’s kind of satisfying, isn’t it?