Final Project Process

To start my project, I went to Home Depot to buy the materials I would need to build my coffee table. I bought the plywood for the tabletop, 1x3 for the apron underneath the tabletop, and lastly 2x2’s for the legs. The first step of my project was to cut the plywood to the correct size for my table top, then cut the 1x3 for the apron, then cut the 2x2’s for the table legs.

I then laid the cut pieces on the tabletop, so I could mark where I wanted the apron and table legs to go on the table.

The hardest part of this was to measure and mark to be able to leave little spaces for the table legs to go in between. 

After laying out and marking where I wanted the apron, I drilled holes for the pocket screws in the apron so I could screw it into the table top. 

Then I screwed the apron into the tabletop. This was where I encountered my first problem. The plywood was not truly ¾”, so I had to put two little washers on the screws before I screwed the apron into the table to ensure that the tip of the screw didn’t poke out of the tabletop. After solving this problem, I screwed the apron into the tabletop.

The next step was to put the table legs into place. To do this, I put a hangar bolt into the corner of the table leg, so it would stick in between the gap I had left in the apron. To put the hangar bolt into the corner of the table leg, I had to create a jig to hold the table leg in place, so I could create a pilot hole for the hangar bolt with the drill press. After creating the pilot hole, I had to find a way to screw the hangar bolt into the table leg, but this was hard because it did not have anywhere for me to hold the bolt without messing up the threads. To solve this issue, I put two nuts on the bolt, then only tried to tighten one, so it would jam up against the other and allow me to screw the hangar bolt into the table leg. 

After doing this for all four legs, I put the legs into place and pocket screwed them into place. 

To make sure it was sturdy, I wanted to put a corner braces that could hold the table leg in place. I measured how long I should make them, then cut some of the left over 1x3 with 45 degree angles on the end so it would fit nicely in the corner, then I drilled a hole in the center for the bolt to go through. 

My issue here was that the bolt was not always in the center of the corner brace, so I had to find where the bolt was then make a hole based on that. After putting the corner braces into place, I found that they were not even with the apron, so I sanded them down to make it smooth. 

Lastly I put wood glue on the outside of the corner braces to give it some added security, then bolted the brace into place. 

Overall, I am very please with how my table came out, and it came out better than I expected. The issues I encountered were very minor, and did not have to start over, so I was again very pleased with my performance on this table.