the students have graduated – a diy midcentury console table

A few weeks ago I shared the start of our DIY Midcentury console table. I was all ready to have a step-by-step tutorial on how we built it. That is not the easiest thing to do when you have company throughout the process. And it is also not the easiest thing to do when things don’t go as planned and you have a husband telling you to put down the camera and help him figure out your crazy project. So yeah, the tutorial isn’t going to be as detailed as I had originally planned 😉 In the last post, I shared that we were planning on using biscuits to secure the four pieces of our table. The catch was our piece of wood had a slight bow to it. Even though it was slight, it caused a few very stressful hiccups in putting the table together with seamless joints. We struggled with it for a bit, used clamps to hold it down and hoped for the best. Dylan was a handy little helper during this time.

Once we finished fighting with the table we attached the hairpin legs. I bought these from Hairpin Legs. This is the second time I use them and am very happy with the quality. Not sponsored in any way, I just found them online and liked the selection of sizes and finishes.

While assembling the box for the table was not easy, it worked very well. I was super excited to see it all ready to go with the legs.

We picked the sapele wood because of the color and grain it had. We contemplated staining it, but the color was too perfect to do so. It is actually almost the same tone as our Broyhill Brasilia dresser that lives in the room as a media center, it just a bit lighter. Because of that I just used a couple of coats of tung oil to seal in the wood and give it a deeper look. We’ve used tung oil to seal it every furniture piece we’ve ever made and have always been really happy with how long it lasts.

You can see in this picture that those sexy 45 degree angles I wanted didn’t come out completely perfect. This is actually not that visible unless you get down to eye-level. I’m sure most people will never notice 😉

Here is the catch of having an old crazy house. These floors are not the final floors in the space. We are still working on this room but for now we have these very old concrete Cuban tiles that are not even. We’ve had to push the console table up against the wall and add shim under the feet to prevent it from rocking. Old house problems.

When we finalize the floors this will likely be moved a bit over to be more centered on the sofa.

Here it is with a few items we’ve acquired for the space. I went with a bold new lamp to add some color to the room since it pretty much all gray and white. The table is the perfect place for my glass of wine in the evening or my coffee in the morning since I love the corner spot on the sectional.

The center part of the table is not very large, but it is perfect for a few books and a little sculpture we have. 

And there you have it, our DIY Midcentury Console table!

What do you think? Have you ever built a piece of furniture without plans?

Linking to my favorite parties here: My Repurposed Life, Creativity Unleashed, Handmade Hangout, Weekend Retreat