Adventures in furniture making

So I recently got a new apartment with my girlfriend and decided that we needed some new furniture. Not wanting to spend a fortune on "fancy" store furniture and not wanting to buy cheap crap that falls apart in a few months I decided to build some of my own.

I stumbled onto this fantastic site, The Design Confidential, on which the author drafts up her own plans for lots of commonly available furniture from many stores. The site is organized fantastically, and is very approachable with excellent plans. More importantly, I felt lazy and did not want to break out the router, and non of her plans called for using a router; instead they called for a pocket-hole jig.

For those unfamiliar (that included me until a few weeks ago), the Kreg pocket hole jigs you see used on all these furniture plan sites are not part of some global marketing conspiracy; Kreg really does make one of the only affordable jigs around and it is just the best thing I have bought for woodworking in years. I love it. Buy one; seriously, it makes making furniture so much easier.

Anyways on to the furniture!



Bedside Tables based on the Pottery Barn Hudson Collection

For my first pieces for the apartment, i decided to build a pair of bedside tables that I had been eyeing at Pottery Barn and had found plans for on The Design Confidential. One of the initial problems I ran into was that the plans called for 2x2 oak or some other sort of hardwood for the legs. Around where I live, you cant get that and I was not about to order lumber in the mail. I ended up using 2x2 framing pine which was overall a huge mistake; it created a LOT of extra work for me to be able get the results I needed and I realize now I should have just bought 2 1x2 oak strips and laminated them together with glue to make a 2x2 oak piece. Oh well; lessons learned.

Lumber: Pine (legs), Poplar (trim and panels), Birch (top)
Finish: Minwax Red Mahogany

All of the lumber for these two tables as well as a bookcase fit in my 1995 Camry. 

Lumber for both tables rough cut at the hardware store

pine legs cut down the one on the top is unfinished the one on the bottom is an hour of sanding

see how much work it took to make these framing pine 2x2s not look like complete garbage?

As you can see above, I had most of the wood, especially the 3/4" birch plywood rough cut for me at the hardware store. Please be aware, they cant do strait cuts...so you better have a circular saw or table saw on hand to make the lines strait on your large boards or you will be very sad. A handheld bandsaw can work in a pinch for evening things out but you have to be super careful with plywood as the bandsaw can strip it down too quickly. I had to spend a lot of extra time sanding the framing pine down to make it look decent for furniture use and even then, its very soft, easy to scratch, doesn't absorb stain evenly, and can warp. bad choice.

The first table I made without bothering to use my 90degree angle clamps... big mistake. Dont be a hero.

basic outline of the table

bottom in place

test fit of the drawer (table top isn't attached here)

drawer in place 

I added a center rail for support which I later realized I really didn't need

I noticed that when I pulled the drawer out far it sagged down. I added this piece to push on the top of the drawer and keep it straight when pulled out

By using pine legs that were too small I could not fit the 1x2 trim. I used 1x.1/2" trim instead

I also decided against using the 1x2 trim around the table top and opted for some decorative birch molding instead

test fit of the drawer once the top was on

trim on the drawer

 As an engineer, I tend to overbuild things, and this first table was no exception. I added a center support for the drawer thinking it needed it (it did not). I also noticed that the drawer when fully extended sagged down (I was not using any slides only wood on wood) and decided to add a scrap piece below the table top to push on the drawer and keep it more or less level when it was pulled out far.

One of the other downsides to using the 2x2 pine for the legs was that it was not the right size (more like 1.25x1.25) and I could not fit the 1x2 trim, so I used 1x1/2 trim instead which looked quite nice. I also decided that the 1x2 trim around the top of the table was too much, so I found some nice 3/4" birch trim I liked and tacked that on to the top. I felt it gave it a more finished look.

Stain/Finishing/Misc Disasters

So when it came time to stain the first table, as is typical with me, I decided to take a shortcut for no particular reason. My girlfriend wanted a dark mahogany color, and I had this old can of minwax polyshades Bombay mahogany laying around. I figured its already the right color, and its poly and stain in one! What could go wrong!?!? Well; for one, don't use an old can of this stuff apparently, also it was very very hard to get it to apply evenly to a nice piece of furniture with 3 different types of wood. So the end result was a huge sticky gloopy disaster.

I wish I had a better picture of the horror, it doesnt look so bad here.

I had to strip everything off by hand, and sand everything down which was a huge disaster. This stuff needs a very toxic stripper to get off, and gloopy polystain got caught in the sander and ruined the top of the table.

first coat of REAL stain

look at the horror.

dont cut corners kids; use real stain

thats a bit better

see how splotchy it looks? after taking off the old polyshades, the new stain did not apply evenly.

 As you can see, it was a nightmare. Stripping off the polyshades was impossible with all the tiny areas and nooks and crannies. Any wonderful finish sanding I did before I stained was lost totally, and I had to use a chemical stripper to get most of it off. To make matters worse, some of the polyshades got caught in my palm sander before I realized it and I have wonderful scroll marks all over the table top. It took many many many coats of minwax red mahogany stain before I got the finish the right color and mostly even looking.

after a few coats of poly

see all those ugly gouges?

the more or less finished table drying. It came out okay, but I wish I had not made the stain mistakes, luckly, I have a second table!

 Using the wrong stain product set me back by over a week and it made me very angry. I got a decent result, but I wish that I had just done things correctly from the beginning. Here is the finished table in action (ill take better pictures when our room is finished):

The girlfriend picked out the knobs, kinda cool looking