The House on the Hill

In case you missed the memo, Kyle is doing a two part post on his DIY pipe and wood coffee table. You can check out part one here!

Now you have everything (except maybe the casters, but those are just about the last step anyway). Time to get your Bob the Builder on! First step, stain like you have never stained before. Also, ventilate, ventilate, ventilate! I used a little 3” chip brush I grabbed at Home Depot for $1.50. I bought it on impulse and ended up loving it for this staining process. The bristles are so short that it doesn’t drink up all your stain and it is so cheap you just toss it afterwards instead of trying to clean it with mineral spirits. Staining took a long time, some boards required at least 6 coats of stain before they got to the color I was looking for. Others required less. I didn’t use a pre-treatment of any kind, but next staining project I am going to just to see if it cuts down on the thirst of the wood. Stain until you get the shade you are looking for. Now go relax, grab a beer, or just start/finish another project that you have going on. You can also screw the pipes (nipples, hehe) into the flanges while you wait. And try to remove the stickers.

Once the wood is dry and you are happy with the finish, get your drill ready. Make sure you know which sides you want facing up, each piece can only have one presentation side. I spent a fair amount of time flipping them over and mixing up the order. I recommend laying out your boards in two separate groups and making sure both sets look awesome. Once you have the groups and sides selected, flip the boards over, being very careful to keep the order correct. The middle board will be flipped over in place and the outside boards will flip and switch sides. Now place your brackets in your chosen locations and screw ‘em in. Make sure the boards stay tightly pressed together when you do this, you don’t want weird gaps between them. If you have clamps big enough, you could also throw a bit of wood glue between the boards and laminate them together before adding the brackets.

So now you have your two coffee table layers. Figure out how far in from the corners you want your pipe legs to be and screw them in to the bottom of the top layer (same side as the brackets). Got them all attached? Good. Now, flip the top over and place the bottom flanges on the top of the bottom layer (the side without the brackets). Get the two layers lined up and, you guessed it, screw the flanges in. All set? You’re screwed! Congratulations.

The final step is to attach the casters to the bottom of your coffee table. I located mine closer to the corners than the flanges and one in an approximation of the middle of the table. You should now have a nice, heavy, solid table that rolls smoothly, even on carpet! The final step is to seal your table however you choose. We have some Minwax Wipe-On Poly that I still need to apply. Now, enjoy your new coffee table! 

Well, that’s all she (ahem, he) wrote folks! Don’t worry though, I’m sure Kyle will be willing to write up another tutorial once he builds our new dining table…

We’re still working hard on our bathroom transformation but in the meantime, enjoy the first of this two-part guest post from the hubs!

Hola! Kyle here. On this episode of the House on the Hill, I am going to take you through the process of a recent build.

So you want to build a coffee table? I think we can make that happen. This coffee table is not difficult to build at all. The two most difficult parts are removing the stickers from the pipe (thus why it has yet to happen on ours) and moving it from your work space; this thing is heavy. Everything needed for the build can be purchased at Home Depot or Lowe’s, or likely your preferred alternative.

Tools needed: drill (or screwdriver if you are looking for a workout, or prefer muscle cramps), paint brush

Materials needed: untreated 2x10s, black plumbing pipe, black plumbing flanges, casters, metal brackets, stain, screws

As you can see, that list is not very daunting. First things first, figure out how big you want your coffee table to be. You need a plan! Measure the space you are looking to put it in or find something that is the right size to measure. We decided we wanted ours to be 36” long and 30” wide and 18” tall. These are nearly the dimensions of the ottoman that came with our sectional. Got your measurements? Great! Next step, spend cash money. Head to your local home improvement store of choice and start by checking out the lumber section. Untreated is the way to go here, hopefully you will not require a high level of water proofing for this project. We used untreated Southern Pine 2x10s. This may be the only lumber you find of this size that is untreated. Once you have selected the straightest, most prettiest boards for your purpose, find someone to cut them for you. You can cut them yourself if you want, but may as well let the people with the really big saw do it for you. If you are going to build to our same dimensions, you will need to 10’ long boards cut at 3’ intervals.

Upon completion of the cutting, strike out in search of the pipe. It should be in the plumbing section. [Tip: if you are at Home Depot, their mobile site is really great for finding the aisle number of any given product you are looking for. Lowes does not (yet?) have this capability on their site.] You can also ask someone if you are having trouble finding the stuff. Once you have found the black pipe section, it is time to select your materials. Most of this stuff will be a matter of personal preference and meeting your dimensions. Remember, the boards are nearly 2” thick and casters will be added later, so there will be at least 6” of height already. We chose the threaded 12” lenghts of 3/4” pipe and the 3/4” flanges. As the pipe is metal, there shouldn’t be any concern about whether or not it will handle the weight of the wood so the diameter is simply your aesthetic choice. Grab yourself 4 pipe lengths (these lengths are sometimes called nipples, hehe) and 8 flanges and head out for the next adventure.

Screws. The screws don’t need to be terribly fancy, just some wood screws that will be long enough to secure the fittings to the lumber without breaking the opposite surface and with a head large enough to actually hold the flanges down. We used Spax #8x screws, 1 1/2” length with the bronze/gold type color. The heads are a bit smaller than I would like for the flanges, if the fitting moves around the screws may slip through. So far we haven’t had any instances of structural failure though. You should also grab some metal brackets to secure the boards to each other. We used 8 4” 4-hole brackets and one piece of thin wood we had lying around in the scrap pile. You could also use 12” brackets, I may or may not switch over to these in the future.

Now for the fun part, casters and stain! Finding casters we wanted was the trickiest part of this build. We didn’t want the black rubber casters so we ended up ordering some 2” steel swivel casters online from Home Depot. We had to order online because they didn’t sell them in store, but we found some highly similar ones the last time we were over there. So check out the caster selection just in case. I would have liked to do some beefy cast iron casters, but a bit of searching using the google made me realize that the casters would cost more than everything else combined. $50 for one caster seemed a bit much for this project. Hitting up your local thrift store, builders surplus, or Habitat for Humanity Restore may be worth while if you want something with more character. We used five casters, one center one for more support. Now go pick out your stain, or whatever finish you want to use. We used Minwax Early American, this is becoming our favorite. It’s the same stain Jess used on the box for the mudroom closet conversion project. 

That’s it for part one. Check back tomorrow for the build!