Custom, weathered, and waxed patio table

Why yes, I did use Minwax products *cough*wheresmymoney*cough*

In case you didn't know, I am sadly not sponsored by any manufacturer or compensated in any way to advertise one product over another. I do this because I enjoy it, damnit. Although I wouldn't be averse to hawking products to my countless readers. "Countless" because it's really hard to count zero.

Moving on: The first thing I did was to take the 2x4s and 4x4s and trim 1/8 inch off all the sides to add corners to the wood and eliminate the appearance of being built with common materials.

I started this project assuming I was going to use dowels to connect the legs to the frame. After a few failed experiments trying to drill perfectly perpendicular dowel holes without a drill press or other jig, I cut my losses and went with a metal bracket and angled support approach.

Thank god I know how to cut miter cut. Adding an extra layer of structural comfort is good, old wood glue wherever wood touches. Not pictured below, but I added some extra strength with a horizontal at the midpoint. To avoid pesky screws showing up on the exterior, I used fancy Kreg Jig joints to screw the horizontal from the inside.

And another photo: this with the top pine boards in place to get an idea of how it would come together.

The total dimensions are 35"x72". With the top boards all lined up, I screwed in horizontals from underneath, but did not yet attach the top to the base. This allowed me to stain them separately. Also, speaking of stain, I wanted to add a weathered/aged look, but in a my-grandmother-kept-damn-good-care-of-this sort of way. So I didn't beat the crap out of the table with bags of screws, which I hear is what you're supposed to do. Instead, I mixed my stain, Minwax Dark Walnut 2716, with Classic Grey 271, also by Minwax. I'd stain one board, adjust my stain mixture, stain another, adjust, stain, adjust, and stain. This allowed me to achieve a slightly muted look that varied nicely from board to board.

 

With the legs of the table up like that, I was really able to soak the stain and eventually the wax into the legs and feet, hopefully staving off wood rot. The wax is Minwax Paste Finishing Wax. Flipping the base right-side up, I also added wax to all the interior bits, especially where the top and base touch and water might accumulate.

Putting it all together:

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Upworthy DIY carpentry headline goes here

While trying to come up with a headline, all I could think of was this: I made my own version of a Restoration Hardware table. You won't believe how much I saved.

On a scale of 0 to 10, my hatred of Upworthy headlines was a 7; I grudgingly admitted that they occasionally piqued my interest. Now, however, it's a 10 because they've infected my brain, and now I can't come up with a non-Upworthy headline.

Anyway, my musings aside, I recently helped a friend complete his outdoor table project. He got two metal sawhorses for free, painted them green, and acquired a slab of 1.25" thick marble. He asked me for a frame of wood around the marble, and this is the finished project:

In the last photo, a branch chandelier is visible above the table. I put together its support bracket, which was frankly one of my favorite projects of recent memory because it forced me to calculate out the forces that would be put on the extended arm.

As you can see, I've worked on a couple projects for this person, and he has an awesome imagination. Working with someone whose imagination is more active than your own is a ton of fun because it makes your work look better. The context of this outdoor tropical living room makes my small contributions look way cooler than they should.

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Bench schematics

I lengthened the seat of the bench and added two cross supports that aren't included in this sketch-up.

All the angles marked 15 degrees are actually 75. The 30 degree angle is actually 60. I initially thought of them as if they were off the perpendicular, but my drawing didn't align with that. Also, the 1.75"s are actually 1.5"s. Also also, I lengthened the "top support" from 17" to 23" to accommodate big butts. 

 The finished product can be found here:

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Because my little sister needs somewhere to sit...

This weekend, in addition to watching Germany prevail over Argentina while drinking weissbier and hefeweizens, I built my college-age sister an outdoor bench for her slightly sketchy gas-station-turned-apartment. I guess if you have a roof over your "driveway," you might as well hang out outside.

Detail of the leg construction.

Three horizontal 2x4s connect the two sets of legs, but the seat slats are 2x1s, which flex when you sit on them. My wife and sister were skeptical about the strength, so to prove it was sturdy, I jumped up and down on the bench.

This is the first time I used a Behr product to finish a project of mine. I usually use Minwax or Varathane. In general I'm not a fan of two-in-one products that promise to both stain and seal; stain + poly just doesn't have as much open time as I like, so it dries too quickly. This was only slightly less true with the BEHR PREMIUM® Semi-Transparent Weatherproofing All-In-One Wood Stain & Sealer. (Talk about a name that just rolls of the tongue.) But it was the only in-store way to get the blue stain that my sister wanted. There are definitely areas, though, where the stain dried too much to achieve a consistent application, but with the dark color and the large grain of the yellow pine, you don't really notice them.

On to the photos:

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I think I may blind myself

Morgan said our outdoor area needed a coffee table. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea. What I do know is that I wanted to change up the style of our deck. Most of the design in our place is pretty modern, and I wanted to bring that aesthetic outside too.

My original idea was to make a simple coffee table, use a sheet of plywood for the top and wrap it in hammered copper. Hammered copper costing what it does, I reconsidered. I found aluminum flashing at the store, but it wasn't available in the width I'd need for my coffee table. So, I improvised.

I made four 45-45 trapezoids that were narrow enough to be wrapped in the aluminum flashing. Had I wanted a solid table, I should have made four 45-45-90 triangles. But I liked the idea of having a whole in the middle of my table! Each trapezoid has bases of 4 ft and 2 ft, and a height of 1 ft. Whole numbers made the math so much easier, so I settled on a 4 ft square coffee table.

Here's the base with one of the trapezoids to give you an idea of the structure.

Instead of centering the base along each board, I pushed it out toward the edges because I assume this'll be the kind of coffee table people put their legs up on, and I wanted the support on the outside edges.

With the trapezoids cut, it was time to clad them in the thick aluminum.

Cutting the aluminum was no easy task. I settled on an old razor blade that I knew I was going to replace soon anyway. Speaking of difficult tasks, shaping the aluminum around the traps proved loud enough to warrant my neighbor popping his head over the fence to ask what in God's name I was doing.

You can see my stable gun and my drill in the above photo. At first, I thought I'd need to temporarily staple the sheet down to continue to bend the sheet. My plan was to later use sheet metal screws to get a more secure hold. After the first sheet, I ended up using just the screws.

I attached the base to the top with internal corner brackets. Nothing fancy.

Now I've got a built-in tanning reflector for my benches. I haven't "finished" the base yet, but I was thinking of painting it a blue to match the pillows. What do you think?

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I can't make the bed, but I CAN make A bed.

Some photos of the bed frame I made. We had some guests stay with us this past weekend, so it was put to the test immediately, and it didn't collapse, so that's a good thing, and this is a run-on. Also, I'm oddly bad at "making the bed"; I just can't seem to get sheets and pillow cases to behave.

If you'll remember from my post about building this frame, I had miscounted the number of slats and was one short. I never actually got around to getting that last slat, so there's one missing near the foot of the bed. Oops.

I also need to thank Morgan for doing all the staining. She started with a base of grey to give it an unsaturated look, and then added Provincial on top. I love the character of the wood that the finish reveals.

A drill press would have ensured all my dowel holes lined up perfectly. With just a drill, I created a template, but variations in the angle of the drill bit and the wood meant that the holes were not consistent. This is most noticeable in the legs. 

The interior sections on the headboard come from different lumber than the outer sections. The stains took slightly differently to each, but not, I think, to bad effect.

I like the way the end grains of the individual pieces of wood line up/don't line up.

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Who needs a boxspring anyway?

The inspiration for my design: The Emerson Bed by West Elm

We moved from a one-bedroom apartment to a two bedroom apartment that is an upgrade in more ways than just room count. It has a balcony, a large usable back deck, and a layout more conducive to entertaining. Now that we have an extra bedroom, we decided we needed a guest bed. We bought a decent mattress (apparently at a huge discount, but it was at one of the stores that run on discounts, which I don't trust any farther than I can throw a queen-sized mattress.) We opted not to buy the boxspring with it, which would have added over $100 to the total, because I wanted to build a slat-style bed frame.

In quantity of wood, this is one of the biggest projects I've worked on yet. And here's my wood pile to prove it:

I assembled the pieces with glue and dowels, using my corded drill to create the dowel holes. I've never felt more keenly my lack of a drill press than while I was drilling almost a hundred holes by hand. Hole alignment and vertical-ness also suffered, but let's pretend it was on purpose to give the bed character. 

Adding the blocky legs to the foot board. 

To save weight and expense on the headboard, I didn't use 4x4s all the way up, as it appears the Emerson bed does. I used 4x4s to frame the space and then filled in the interior with 1x4s. 

Time to cut the 1x4s to fit.

Not bad. 

I made the rails follow a similar, variable-length pattern with a single 2x4 spanning the whole length as the main structural support. Here's a photo of the headboard, footboard, and rails:

I used no-mortise bed rail fittings to hold the rails to the foot and headboards. I also included a middle beam, lengthwise, for additional support and to hopefully prevent mattress sag. 1x2 striplings form my slats and spacers. As you can see toward the foot, I miscounted the number I'd need:

The next step is to stain the exposed pieces and finish it with a hard-finish furniture wax. I'll post a follow-up of the bed when it's completely finished. 

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