Monday, April 13, 2009

Make a sofa table for under $20. (For real.)

First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! We had a great one -- lounged all day. Well, I did. Hubby did some work outside and I napped, blew bubbles with the Bub and ate all day. A wonderful day with all of us at home, which is my favorite kind of day.

As promised, I'm going to share how I made our sofa table in the living room I showed you here. Before I do that, I have to get on my soap box about getting your furniture away from the walls!!

I've done this where possible in our home and love how it makes spaces more cozy, more intimate. In our family room, it would have been easy to put all the furniture against the walls:

But instead, I moved them away and created the sitting area. Sometimes it can be a pain...I mean, I have to walk a whole extra five steps to get around the sofa. But it's worth it.

In our living room, I wanted to do something similar and tried a few layouts, but with only one wall in the whole room, I had to end up placing the sofa there. I told you how I wanted to add more height to the sofa...so I knew a sofa table would be the perfect solution.

Have you ever seen an eight foot long sofa table? Me either. I knew I had to make my own if I wanted one. So I did, for under $20. Here's what you do --

Measure the length of the sofa. Measure how tall you want the table to be.

Go to Lowe's, have a board cut to the length you need it. I chose one that was nine inches wide, but you could do whatever you want. Then get more of the same board cut to the height you need. Depending on how long you want it, you'll want enough for each end, and at least one support in the middle:

Get some "L" brackets like these:
They usually come four to a package for around $3. Then just use a drill and use the brackets to put the "legs" on the bottom of the table. You're done! Mine is a little wobbly, but when you push the sofa up to it, it secures it perfectly.

I needed a little more height on my table, but didn't want to make the table taller, because you would see the unfinishedness of it (word? OK.) sticking up over the back of the sofa. Instead, I got a few more pieces of wood and made a little pedestal. I painted everything in chocolate brown:

You don't have to leave it exposed...for a long time, I had fabric over the table. You could even stain it. There are unfinished edges all over the place on mine, but no one would ever notice.

I'm not lyin' when I tell you these projects are easy. Have Lowe's or Home Depot make all your cuts and all you need is a drill and the brackets. The whole table will take you less than 30 minutes to make. Swear. For reals!

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