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?