Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Making a Sewing/craft Table

I have been putting my sewing machine on the computer desk to sew. No it is not fun but it beats having to clean it up every time nap time ends. So when I came across this Tutorial at Running with Scissors I knew it was about time I built a sewing/craft table. We already had an extra Bi-fold door in the garage so I thought I was in fat city. I bought the wood and built the base. I was SO excited when the base turned out as this is the first piece of furniture I have ever built!So you can only imagine my Horror, disgust, anger, frustration, embarrassment when I put the door on top of my table base only to realize that my door was smaller than the one in the tutorial and did not even cover my newly built base. I guess I thought of everything but to measure my door.I went back and forth on what to do. I had an old coffee table I could use the top of but I would still have to redo the base since the base was a door height in length (nearly 80 inches). The Hubs said "just go buy a piece of wood to go on top" but really that went against my "plan" to do it cheap and with what we had on hand.
Then I saw two heavy press board shelves that a neighbor had given us for garage shelving but that we ended up not needing. We had no use for them so TA DA my new table top. Sounds easy enough but the shelves had divots on each side so I have to saw each side and then try to match the two piece as close as possible so I wouldn't have a huge seam in the middle of my table. It was another gut wrenching experience. I always thought sawing a straight line would be so easy but I guess I need more work at it because it took me a long time to get the two pieces close to flush (that is right not even perfect.)
I did still make one big mistake. I was getting frustrated when attaching the top to the base. The screws were just not working and I could not figure out why (really lack of skill and knowledge was mainly to blame). So at one point I took a big nail and hammered it into the table. The only problem is I didn't countersink before doing this and after realizing my mistake I was not able to get it out so my table does have one little round nail head on the top hahaha. I also didn't know how to countersink nails so I left the nail heads exposed primed and painted it but then was talking to a friend who told me how to countersink so I did that and then had to repaint it. But then I put the wrong protective coating on it which turned it yellow so I had to sand it all down and paint it again.
Lets say it is far from perfect but for my first time building a piece of furniture I think I did pretty well with what I had!I only show you half the table because the other half has all my sewing and craft stuff piled all over crazily until I get a chance to finish projects and organize. Once I get things more organized and hopefully decorated I will take a picture!

1 comment:

  1. mckell that table is amazing!!! i've been trying to find a sewing table that is big enough for other things. you are crazy talented.

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