The easiest DIY Center Table you can ever build

Blog Center table Furniture How tos

There are two reasons why I have titled this post the way I have :

• One is because it is simply the easiest center table that you can ever make
• And secondly, I made my table with no prior knowledge on Woodworking and so I believe anyone can too

For reasons unknown, I never captured the individual steps involved in making the earlier tables. And so, I am going to take advantage of Google Sketchup and the illustrations I made to try to explain the steps in making this simple table. Point to note : This will work wonders if the height of the table is low, and the legs are wide.

Materials and tools required :

• 19mm Plywood (2 ft x 2 ft) for the table top
• Padauk Wood (4 inch x 4 inch and 23cm in height). You can get this from either a plywood store or a local timber store.
• In both the cases above, I gave the specifications to the store owner and had them cut at the store
• 3 inch screws
• Electric Drill
• One Side Teak for covering the table top 
• Stains / paint as applicable

Step 1 and  2

Just place the plywood top on legs that are placed on each corner. Make sure the legs are properly aligned to be along the edges of the plywood top

Place the plywood top on the wide legs below

Step 3 and 4

Drill pilot holes through the plywood top and into each of the legs beneath. Through the already drilled pilot holes, drive the 3 inch screws in. You will need a minimum of 2 screws and can add more if needed. As you can see, I drove those screws along the diagonal edges of the padauk legs.

You can smear Fevicol SR (before you drive the screws) to the surface of the legs and the top where they come in contact with each other.

Just drill pilot holes and drive the long screws in

Step 5 and 6 :

Just allow the glue to dry and your table is ready. Of course, it is not ready in its finished state. You still have to sand, add color and apply a top coat. You can also install rubber bushes to the bottom of the legs to make pulling around noise free.

Install rubber bushes if required

Do remember that this simple technique works as long as the table height is low and legs are wide. Longer and slender legs would mean there would be instability because of wobbling. Of course, this can be overcome by using joints and additional horizontal support between the legs, but then, it would not be the easiest table to make, right?

To finish, here’s what I did (You can click on the links for more details).

I covered the top with One Side Teak, completely sanded all the surfaces (top and the legs) and finally stained it.

So, agree or not agree?  Does that look like the simplest table? Share your thoughts.

Linking in : Colours Dekor

DIY Center Table - Anniversary post

Blog Center table Furniture

As we step into the fourth year of Woodooz tomorrow, we wanted to look back at our most favorite project ever. This center table - The first thing we ever made. Still remember how when we started, we had absolutely no clue how to go about it. The internet had loads of information, the plywood store guys were not so helpful and we had no expertise whatsoever to even think that we could pull it off.

It has been an enriching ride here in Woodooz with learning opportunities coming our way every other day. It is this table that made us ask the question, "Can we make it ourselves?" every time we wanted something for the home. Three years on, and we still proudly use this table in our living room.. It may have its minor defections, but to know that we built it from scratch has always given us immense pleasure.

The table has seen many a steaming coffee spills and yet has stood the test of time. Many a dinners have happened around it. We have used it for all our Scrabble and Rummy sessions. And to think how many conversations it has started only makes this table a personal favorite of ours. 

Center Table / Coffee Table

While I intend to do a "How to build your coffee table" using Sketchup illustrations (unfortunately, we never thought we would have a need to put up a DIY post ever and so we never took pictures at every step), I will leave you with the details on the materials, tools that I used to get this done. Do remember to leave us a, "Happy Blog Birthday" message and make our day :)

Materials used	Tools used	For the finish	Miscellaneous
Deal wood for the legs Plywood for the table top One side teak (OST) for the top finish Rubber bushes	Electric Drill Drill bit for pilot hole Drill bit for counter sink 4 inch screws Glue (Fevicol SR) L Shaped clamps Hammer Headless nails Screw Drivers Emery (Sand) Paper (Grade 80, 100, 120)	Thinner Ramson wood sealant MRF Wood stain Clear Gloss Varnish	Sponge Gada Cloth Vinyl Gloves Table Measurement Height 10.2 inches Length 3 ft Breadth 2 ft

Linking in : Colours Dekor

How to make a DIY shoe rack / cabinet

Blog DIY Woodworking FAQ Furniture How tos

Making a shoe rack or a cabinet may seem complex and quite a task for a home DIYer, but you would be surprised to know how easy it is when you break it down to simpler steps. This is a step by step tutorial for making your own cabinet (like the one below) at home with just an electric drill, screws and screw drivers. Before you move further, do take a moment to read about pilot holes and butt joints. For the first time, I am trying to put up a 'how to' series by merely using illustrations. Would love to hear your feedback on this.

Materials Required

1. 1 number of 12 mm plywood for the top (27.5 inches x 13.5 inches). This will be the cabinet top
2. 2 numbers of 12 mm plywood for the sides (21.5 inches x 12 inches)
3. 1 number of 6 mm plywood for the backing support (25.5 inches x 12 inches)
4. 1 number of 12 mm plywood for the bottom (24 inches x 12 inches)
5. Additionally, you would also need 12 mm plywood for the following (Not shown in the image below)
• The shelf
• The cabinet doors
6. Rubber bushes (4 numbers)
7. Door knobs (2 numbers)

Dimensions for the shoe rack

You can get these materials in your neighborhood plywood store and you can have the plywood cut either at the same store (like I did), or in a timber store for a minimal cost. All you need to do is give them the dimensions. Of course, you can have it cut yourself if you have the necessary tools.

Tools and supplies required

1. An electric drill
2. Screw driver set
3. Some star head screws (2 inches)
4. Fevicol SH or an equivalent wood adhesive

Make the basic structure

1. The idea is to make the basic structure or the shell of the cabinet using simple butt joints. The top plywood plank is placed on the side vertical planks which are further joined together in the bottom (Check image below)
2. Place the top on the vertical side planks. The dimensions are such that there is a space of 1 inch on all sides of the top planks.
3. Similarly place the bottom plank between the two sides and fix the three together.
4. Secure the planks together using 2 inch screws (indicated by dots) as shown in the image below. For additional reinforcement, you can use adhesive. To make it easier for driving the screws in, drill a pilot hole extending from one surface to the other surface.

Shoe Rack Do it Yourself

Fix the shelf and the doors

1. When cabinet is made with butt joints, there is every bit chance that it would be weak and would wobble if considerable weight is applied. To overcome this issue, the backing support in the rear is mandatory. It is your personal choice and you can decide to cover the entire rear with the backing support.
2. Install the shelf. You either drive screws into the shelf through the sides or you can also use shelf brackets. The advantage with shelf brackets is that you can remove the shelf to make more space when desired or you can adjust the placement of the shelf at any height you need at any point in time.
3. Installation of the cabinet door is beyond the scope of this post. 
4. However, you can learn the trick from this detailed post on installing a cabinet door.

Make your own shoe rack

Attach rubber bushes to the bottom of your shoe rack to ensure that the rack is not placed directly on the floor. You can also have a simple knob installed. Whether you want to have a single door or a double door is up to you. But any length of the cabinet beyond 1 feet 9 inches, a double door would be preferable.

DIY Shoe Rack

Of course, you will have to suitably finish it using stains or paint. Hope you find this useful. If you find information lacking, or need more inputs on this one, feel free to shoot a mail to contact@woodooz.com. Do leave your comments and let me know what you think of this DIY.

Linking in : Colours Dekor

Make your own lapstop stand / Serving tray

3D model Blog breakfast table DIY FAQ Furniture How tos laptop stand portable table serving tray woodworking

DIY Laptop Stand

Working from home is turning out to be more resourceful especially considering the commute distance. The low center table  has always been where we laid the laptop while working. However, there are times during a call when we needed to work from the room, and it was not possible to move the table. And so the need to make a portable DIY laptop stand. While it was intended to be used as a laptop stand, here are other functional uses for this piece of furniture.

DIY Laptop stand

How to install a glass door and save upto Rs.600

All Blog DIY FAQ Furniture How tos woodworking

Do you have the need to cover a cabinet with a glass door?

Do you feel your existing cabinet glass door can do with some newer look?

Or do you just wish to learn something cost effective and functional?

Then this tutorial is for you.

After three years of following up with the original vendor who built our TV floor unit, we decided to install a door for the centre cabinet .The DTH system and DVD player are remote controlled and hence installing a glass door was the obvious choice. Here’s how you can do a glass door installation.

Cost of project: Low- includes cost of the glass panels, and glass door hinges
Difficulty level: Medium to high

Time required: 2-4 hours

How to install a cabinet door in 8 simple steps

All Blog DIY FAQ Furniture How tos woodworking

Installing a cabinet door is a very easy and functional activity and can be done with the help of few easy-to-use tools. While the need to install a door may not be so frequent, this tutorial will help when you have a creaking / broken door that needs replacement. Considering this is the first DIY tutorial on Woodooz, I would appreciate any comment/ feedback. Feel free to drop in your opinions. 

This tutorial is also useful if you are specifically looking for details on how to install door hinges / European cup hinges. Note: Click on the pictures for a bigger / clearer view if required

CONTENTS
1,2:Cabinet identification,Materials reqd	3. Plywood door dimension	4. The European Cup Hinge
5. Mark Points to Secure Hinge	6,7 Bore hole, Install door	8. Add more hinges

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Step 1 - Identifying the Cabinet

Step 2 - Materials Required

Step 1 : Identify Cabinet Needing a door (Back to Top)

• Identify the cabinet needing a door
• Our TV stand turned Shoe Rack badly needed a door and was the obvious choice for this exercise. The rack is in the living room, and going by the contents in the cabinet, you can pretty much understand why this needed to be covered.
• Measure the sides of the cabinet before buying the plywood for the door

Step 2 :Materials and Tools required

Low Center Table / Coffee table

Blog Center table Furniture

This one was custom made for a colleague.We provided a 3-D view of the design we had in mind and after few mail exchanges, the design and the dimensions were finalized. While a detailed step-by-step DIY of this project with pictures is due, here is a list of learning that we had from this project.

Low Center Table design

• Having a design on paper helps understand the material requirements better. There was zero wastage on plywood that we bought for this project. It also helped arrive at a near accurate estimate of the cost. Check out the finalized design we made for the project.
• Allenkey cross dowels are pre-dominantly used in making knockdown furniture. Here's a good tutorial on how to install these dowels. Cross dowels in Chennai are probably available only in Parrys and so we used ordinary bolt and nut as an alternative. In the process, we have learnt to understand little bit on the nuances of knockdown furniture.
• Though leaving the grains open is more of a trend in recent times, we learnt that using paste fillers can help fill the grains resulting in a much smoother finish (Thanks to a 10 min session with a professional carpenter).
• We also learnt how to install a glass shelf. And that means few more projects that we wanna do using glass and we incidentally have one requirement at home. More on it later.

Center Table

Center table with glass shelf

• Plywood is ideal for smaller stationary projects, but the more the use of plywood, the more it adds to the weight. We learnt that we may have to look at alternate lighter raw material for any such projects in the future.
• It is not always required to start with an 80 grit sand paper and work towards the denser ones. For some of the pieces, we had to start with 120 grit. The use of sand paper is subject to the existing smoothness of the surface.
• Use of plywood edge banding is recommended. We learnt that applying putty and painting  edges may not provide the desired finish all the time.
• We also learnt, if one is losing 99 strands of hair per day, it is better to wear a cap especially during the process of varnishing.
• It is better to understand the workload involved besides knowing the amount of time one can spend on such projects outside of their day jobs. It helps better to set the right expectations in terms of timelines. We are still novices and still battling with estimating the right workload, but we have learnt that we need to factor unplanned weekend activities (family trips, functions, work etc...) before committing timelines. 

Do let us know what you think. Any feedback / comment is welcome. Do you think there is something amiss ? Share your thoughts.

P.S. Linking in : Line across my face, @thepicketfence, Colours Dekor

Pin It

- Somu

Creating a 3D design

3D model Blog Center table Furniture Google Sketchup How tos

When custom making furniture, the end user may want to have an idea of the product through a 3-dimensional image (Check out our 3D gallery of furniture). Besides serving this purpose, a 3D image is also useful to estimate raw material requirement, identify areas for additional reinforcements, play around with colors, and most importantly to arrive at a near accurate cost estimation. Having a 360 degree view helps plan for every possible requirement in advance as against learning and applying during the making process.

Creating a 3D image is easy if your basics on geometry, elevation, projection and perspective are intact. It is addictive and you can see yourself creating more designs - copied, inspired, original or otherwise. This coffee table was inspired by many similar designs and has been approved by the potential user. It is now work in progress and likely to be completed in another week. For this project, I used Google Sketchup.

Creating a 3D design of a room using Google Sketchup

Sketchup is a freely available Google tool that allows for creation of 3D models of furniture, rooms, and other design models. It is used by designers to play around with their designs and comes with a user friendly interface.   I created this 3D model of our kitchen for the SMALL KITCHEN COMPETITION @ APARTMENT THERAPY. Considering I have very limited background on design, you can imagine how much of an easy to use tool it is.

P.S. Linking in : In the Studio, Sneak peak, Kreative Korner, @ the picket fence, Colours Dekor, Lines Across my Face, todayscreativeblog

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Over to you : Do you plan your designs prior to implementing them ? Be it decorating your room, or building a piece of furniture, do you visualize what you want and how you want through an interface besides your mind ? What tools do you use ? Or do you love the traditional way of capturing your visuals in a paper ? Share  your thoughts.

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- Somu

Center table... again !

Blog Center table Furniture

The art of staining, mastered (almost) finally…  Maybe it requires a separate post by itself. As for the center table, we wanted to make one that is sale worthy. We stuck to simple design as in the previous cases. However unlike the earlier tables (Square Center Table and Low Center Table), where stain was applied directly over the legs and the plywood sides, we decided to layer the entire table (legs, sides and the top) with 4mm sheet of teak (One Side Teak). The stain was applied over this sheet.  We also did not use sealers.

Center Table / Coffee Table

This reduced, though didn’t completely eliminate, the amount of time spent on sanding the wooden surface, as OSTs come with a relatively smoother finish. Nonetheless, the saved up time was spent on cutting the OST and sticking it on the wood surface. After the multiple layers of walnut stain were allowed to dry, the table was coated with clear varnish. Quite an improvement, and personally we are happy with the outcome.

Dimensions : 2 Ft x 2 Ft x .9 Ft (Height)

Update (24-04-2011) - Sold and delivered

- Somu

Center Table - Perfect gift for the perfect occasion...

Blog Center table Furniture

When we decided to make another center table DIY, it wasn’t for our own use. We thought it was perfect gift  for a house warming ceremony. This time around we applied all our learning from the earlier making of our own center table to come out with an almost perfect table. 

The materials and tools used were the same as in the center table DIY. However, 

• we used Padauk wood for the legs this time.
• We additionally used chalk powder and paste filler to attain the smooth finish for the plywood sides, which was missing in the earlier center table (the multiple layers of plywood was visible). 
• We decided on a smaller table (2 feet by 2 feet) to suit the living room dimensions.  
• Also, we went for the dual color finish to retain the natural look of the OST layer. 

Center Table / Coffee Table

We also additionally used a painter's masking tape to be able to get sharp paint lines between the top surface and the adjoining edges. The tape also help in preventing bleeding of varnish, which in most cases is difficult to remove once dried. 

- Somu