HOW TO BUILD A MID CENTURY COFFEE TABLE

So as promised, here is the process in which I built my coffee table!

I love the lines of Mid Century modern furniture and I feel like it is so versatile and compliments so many different styles and furniture pieces. I wanted a coffee table that had clean lines, the Mid Century style and offered a little more storage than just a regular table. So I did a little research and found this style. It was so simple and a great blank canvas that I could design around. I knew the style that I wanted, but I definitely didn't want to spend upwards of $300 which is what most of the ones I found were going for. Plus, I always wanted to tweak them to fit my style and design anyways...So since I had already built a dining table and needed a new project to start anyways....I decided that I would just build it myself. 

Here are all of the supplies you need:

Two 18" x 36" pieces of wood

Two 8" x 18" pieces of wood 

Four 8" Tapered legs 

Four Angled Leg Plates

3/8" Dowels

Wood Glue

Wood Filler 

Wood Stain (if you want it stained)

Polyurethane 

Tools:

Orbital Sander (or a lot of patience and sand paper)
A Dowel Jig (I found mine at Home Depot)

Drill with a 3/8" Drill bit

Level

Screwdriver

Wood clamps

Now, I must say that I built this coffee table with the help of my Grandfather-in-law and I would strongly suggest getting someone to help you assemble this if you are just starting out. I definitely don't think I could have done it without him! 

I bought the wood for my table at Lowes and had them cut it down for me there since I do not have a saw at our condo to do this, but I would definitely recommend doing it at home if you have the resources to do so. The associates there are not always the most accurate when cutting the wood down and that is kind of a major deal when it comes to building furniture. I had to do a lot of sanding to do to get the wood to the same length and I think it would have been easier and less time consuming if I had just cut the wood myself. But I digress.. 

The first thing that I did was measure where the dowels would go and figure out how to use the dowel jig. This was the hardest part of the whole project! Definitely practice on two scrap pieces of wood before you start drilling into your good pieces of wood. This little dowel jig did the job but it definitely took a LOT of patience, practice and 2 sets of hands. I unfortunately didn't take pictures of this process.. but I will try and explain it the best I can. 

This is the basic concept of the how the dowel joint is going to work: 

Diagram from Hobbit House Inc.

I evenly measured out 4 places where I wanted the dowels to be on each piece of wood. Be sure to discretely mark the wood to remind yourself later how each piece of wood lines up. Follow the instructions for whichever dowel jig you have to make the holes on each piece of wood.We marked our drill bit with tape to make sure that we wouldn't be drilling down too far. I also recommend clamping everything down to ensure that the dowel jig does not move when you begin drilling... this was definitely the trickiest part! 

Once all the holes were drilled on all the pieces of wood, we dry fit the table together to make sure that everything fit perfectly before we glued it together. 

When everything looked like a good fit, we took the pieces apart again, applied glue to the edge of the board and down into the holes and reassembled. When you are doing this, make sure it is done quickly to ensure the glue does not set before the pieces are assembled. Once everything was assembled again, we clamped down the wood and let it sit overnight. 

Because my pieces of wood were not perfectly cut at Lowes, I had lots of sanding to do to make sure that the wood was flush. 

The picture below is once I finished sanding. Would you just look at that beautiful edge! Nice and flush! 

I also filled all of the seams with wood filler. This is optional but I just thought it make it look a little more finished.

Next I screwed the leg plates to the bottom of the table, and screwed in the legs! 

This is it assembled before it was sealed with polyurethane....Love at first sight! 

I applied 3 coats of satin finish, water-based polyurethane and sanded with a 220 grit sandpaper in between and this is the finished product! I cannot be more happy with the way it turned out! I hope you guys give this a go if you are in the market for a new coffee table and enjoy DIY projects! 

 Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this and let me know in the comments if you think you will try it out!
Happy Building!