My wife and I have been wanting to replace our ottoman/cube/coffee table thing for a while. I wanted to build a custom one and we landed on a design that we both liked.

Here is a picture of the finished piece

The Plan

With most of my projects, I like to start with a design, on paper, to tweak dimensions and work everything out before I start cutting wood. So here is the plan

The legs and rails will made from maple and start out as 8/4″ maple milled down to 1 1/2″ square. The lower shelf is 4/4 walnut and the very top is also 4/4 walnut, but the off-cuts have been glued to the underside to make it look thicker. The base will be held together with mortise and tenon joints in the corners and a dovetailed stretcher across the middle. Overall, it measures 46″L X 30″W X 17″ T.

Build Video

Rough Lumber and Milling

I started this project by working on the base. and with all projects it starts with cutting the material to rough length.

Once I get the boards to cut to length I move on to jointing one edge so I can rough-cut everything to width on the bandsaw.

Once all of the base pieces were cut to a rough width, it was time to joint one face and one edge to get flat and perpendicular faces. Then they went through the planer to get 1 1/2 square pieces. I made a few extra parts at this time because you never know when I am going to screw something up.

Mortise, Tenons, Dovetails….oh my

I started the jointery by laying out the mortises on the legs and the tenons on the rail pieces. The tenons are 1/2 thick and vary slightly on height depending if they are the upper lower ones. After laying out the locations, I grabbed my router and mortising jig. I plunged my 1/2″ router bit into the leg and everything was going okay until…….

For some reason, this maple was giving me a world of trouble and my router bit kept jumping and hitting weird grain. Luckily I had an extra leg milled up, so I started down a different avenue. Instead of using the router for everything, I started with a 3/8″ forstner bit and hogged out a majority of the material with it. Then finished it up with the router and this worked beautifully.

After routing a majority of the material, I used a chisel and squared up the corners.

The tenons were cut using a combination of the table saw and the router table. I cut the shoulders on the table saw, then cut the cheeks with a larger rabbeting/dado bit on the router table with a miter gauge. The router table approach is definitely slower, but I have precise adjustments, so I can sneak up o the perfect fit. Once the cheeks were cut, I fine tuned any of them with a shoulder plane and chisel. Then, I had to miter each end of the tenon, so they could fit together in the leg. After I had a dry fit, I laid out for the dovetailed stretcher.

I set up a “fence” along the rails and used a straight bit to remove most of the material. Then swapped bits to my dovetail bit and performed the final cut.

To create the dovetail, I went back to the router table. I used a scrap piece of lumber to dial in the fit and figure out the process. Below you can see how I clamped it to some 90 jigs to keep it stable. I also removed a bulk of the waste on the bandsaw before moving the router table.

Finally, I cut some grooves on the router table for the table top fasteners.

Sand, Paint, Poly, Clamp, Sand, Poly…….wait what?

After I was happy with all the joints, i started sanding all the base pieces up to 180 grit. Then masked off the tenon and mortise areas for paint.

I rolled a coat of Benjamin Moore Advanced (Black Tar) on all the pieces. I rolled one surface of each part then rolled them 90 and painted the next surface. The tenons act like little ledges to keep the piece off the bench. After the first coat dried, I sanded it smooth with 320 grit and applied another coat. It was around this time I started to work on the walnut top and shelf, but hold on ,I will get there.

After the second coat was dry, I decided I wanted a bit more protection and added a coat of water based poly. Once it dried, it was time to clamp the base together. I started by gluing up the long rails and the legs as sub-assemblies and then glued the whole base together.

I like having those center stretchers dovetailed in place so I can slip them in after the M&Ts are clamped up. From the picture you can see I used some plywood protectors for the legs. Unfortunately, the poly still got mangled up. So I had to sand the exterior of the entire base and apply another coat of polyurethane. Extra work, but it turned out great.

Walnut Top and Shelf for Coffee Table

The top and lower shelf started out by rough cutting everything to length. I had to account for extra material on the top, so I could glue the off-cut onto the bottom. ….that will make sense in a bit.

Most of the pieces were far too wide for my 6″ jointer, so I marked them and cut them in half for milling. Some were just over the 6″ mark and I could remove the guard and joint the surface. Some of the board would hang off the jointer and leave a large ledge/ridge. I removed the ledge with a handheld planer and jointed it again until it was flat. For the pieces I cut in half, it was just a standard face joint and edge joint. I wanted to let the wood rest a bit and then I milled it again.

After the boards were milled a second time, I ripped them to width and laid out the pieces for the top and the shelf. Then I could make sure all of the glue seams were tight and use my jointer, if needed, to flatten any out. Once I was happy with the seams, I could clamp it up.

I had a small knot hole in the top and filled it with epoxy. Transtint (mission brown) was used to darken the epoxy.

Making the Coffee Table Top Thicker

After flattening the top with a handplane and sander I cut the piece down to final size, but saved all of the off cuts. I used the off-cuts to match the end grains of the top, but had to use a different board for the strips down the sides.

I also had to glue a piece in the middle where the top sits on the very center crossmember. All of the pieces are from the same top with the same board spacing and glued in the same orientation, so expansion and contraction should be totally fine.

I used a flush trim bit to even up the edges and then a card scraper and chisel to clean up the glue squeeze out.

Lower Shelf for Coffee Table

The lower shelf was flattened with a handplane and 60 grit, then it was cut to its final dimensions. The lower shelf also needed the corners notched to fit around the legs. I notched the legs on the bandsaw. I wanted to check the fit on the base and I was met with a rather nasty surprise. The shelf wouldn’t fit! I couldn’t angle it enough in any direction to get it to fit inside of the base. After trying and staring at it for 20 minutes, i figured I would start making the corner notches larger. I went from about 1 5/8 to around 2″ and I could just sneak the shelf past the legs and get it to fall into place. Close call. After that, it was time to sand everything and get it ready for finish.

Finish

I first sprayed a coat of garnet shellac followed by 320 grit sanding and another coat of garnet shellac. It really warms up the gray tones in the walnut.

After the second coat of shellac it was time to sand again and start spraying polyurethane. I sprayed 3 coats in total with a sand in between each. Then it was time to assemble the coffee table and put it in the house.