The wife of a good friend of mine asked if I could help her put together a
small table for their bathroom. She said that it didn't need to "look nice" because it
was going to be covered with a tablecloth anyway. She just needed it to be functional.
I thought to myself, "Build something that doesn't look nice? Yeah, I think I can
do that."
So, she came over with some scrap wood that she wanted to use for the project.
She had a round piece of ¾" plywood about 12" in diameter, and another scrap of pine that
was about 4" x 36" x ¾".
We cut the long pine scrap into three legs each about ¾" x ¾" x 30". Then
I took a couple of plywood scraps that I had lying around (they seem to be everywhere…) and made
two rectangles exactly the same size (approx 6" x 8" x ¾"). I used these as a sub-base for
the top and as a lower shelf. I attached the legs to both the rectangles using glue and
brads (via my handy pneumatic nail gun). The lower shelf sits about a quarter of the way
up the table legs, or about 8" off the floor. The table wasn't stained or painted since it
was going to covered with a tablecloth.
The project took about an hour and my friend helped with much of the construction.
I think I may have gotten her interested in woodworking and power tools. The result
was a functional little table that my friends use to help decorate their master bathroom.
Note: This project was a good reminder to me that I often tend to over-design
things. I kept asking my friend if she wanted me to add some features to the table
(like routing the edges or staining it once we finished). She was happy with it the way
it was. Sometimes I spend so much time designing something that I delay in the construction
of what really just needs to be a functional item. I'll have to work on that: accepting the
fact that sometimes you just need to build something and the result doesn't have to be
something you can "oooh and aaah" over.