Well, I finally built something! It’s been over a year since I built any type of piece of furniture. Mainly, because my new job keeps me busy during the week so the only time I have time to work in the shop is on the weekends.

My wife bought an old bookcase on Marketplace last year. She originally wanted to use the bookcase in her booth, but it was in such poor shape that she decided that she wanted me to take it apart and make a coffee table with the wood instead. So, I disassembled it and removed all of the cut nails from the boards.

The wood was poplar and in decent shape, just dirty and covered in paint, so I sanded the surfaces clean with my random orbital sander. Some of the boards were nearly 20″ wide.

We originally wanted to use an old 4 x 4 to make the legs but came up empty at our local reclaimed wood supplier. So I ended up using a douglas fir 4 x 4 from Home Depot and turned four legs from it.

Assembling the table was super simple. I used Dominoes to attach the sides to legs and the top pieces were going to be screwed down from underneath.

I opted to put a drawer in the front of the table so I cut out a rectangle hole in front with my jig saw. Then, I made a drawer with frame work with some scrap pine. The drawer face was glued and pinned onto the drawer box.

After the drawer was made and fitted well, I attached the top pieces and brought it upstairs into the living room. It was a fun, simple build, and it felt good to get back in the shop and build something.