I went up to LA to work on my coffee table this Sunday and Monday, and it is finally all done except for staining, which my dad is getting one of his friends to do. So let’s all look at some pictures of my coffee table!

A close up of the apron – my dad did this carving, because it is complicated and fancy and he has skillz. The wood we’re using is cherry. Right now it is very light pinkish white, but over time it will become reddish. The stain is going to be slightly reddish as well.

The aprons and top. I did some of the carving on these. Also lots and lots and lots of sanding. The top is put together in a way that allows the individual boards to expand and contract over time: the boards in the middle are all loosely tongue and grooved together, and then held in place by the four boards on the outside framing them.

Here it is all assembled except for the top. To put the top on, you put screws through the little blocks of wood on the sides. You attach it to the sides and not the corners so that the wood can move around some over time. I did a bunch of carving on the legs, although my dad did their little feet.

Here is assembled (and upside-down). I learned a lot working on this project with my dad. When I initially suggested “Hey, let’s make a coffee table together” I sort of assumed we’d nail some already-shaped pieces of wood together and call it a day. But of course, since my dad is a bad-ass who carves insanely amazing pieces of furniture as a hobby, this table involved a lot of what we in the software biz call “feature creep.” First it was “Oh, let’s carve the legs” and then it was like “Let’s just do a little bit of simple carved detail on the aprons” and then it was “But wouldn’t this look nicer if there was this little spirally bit on the ends?” And who am I to complain about a coffee table with more awesome?
There is also no way I could possibly make anything like this on my own. Not only were there lots of “Oh, I will do this super advanced part” times, but there were also two days of “Okay, now we go to your uncle’s stair-building shop and use all his fancy machines.” We used five different kinds of power sanders on this table. And a router. And many different kinds of saws. And a boring machine.
(Related aside: When I was in high school and working for my dad at a different stair-building shop, I found the name “boring machine” to be hilarious. It’s just a machine that bores holes, but whenever my dad went to any kind of machine trade show, I’d be like “Were there boring machines there?” and he’d be like “Yes, they had some very nice boring machines” and I’d be all “Well, they’re all boring machines to me!” Ha ha ha, I was kind of a jerk as a teenager.)
It was really nice getting to work with my dad on something that he really likes doing, and is an expert at. It was fun getting to see how he designs/thinks about projects. (Not surprisingly, it is very similar to how I approach projects.) And he was a very good teacher, one who dealt with all of my “Ahhh something went wrong and I don’t know what to do!” moments with “Don’t worry, we can fix that.”
And now I have this amazing coffee table, which in case of a fire will be the second thing dragged out of my apartment after the cat. Maybe before the cat, if she keeps waking me up at 6 am to pet her.

Expect 2000 more pictures once this is stained and in my house. And possibly also a “Look at my coffee table but no touching the coffee table party.
Tagged coffee table, WIP