Farmhouse Coffee table becomes our new TV Stand!
I’ve been wanting a farmhouse coffee table with the cross beam ends for some time now. Here’s how that dream became a reality a little sooner than expected. The thing is … I happened to SELL the huge entertainment console out from under our large flat screen tv. I know, well, we got the new TV before Christmas last year, and the only piece of furniture in the house wide enough to hold it was the entertainment console that I had refurbished ready for sale in my online marketplace! It is the Midnight Blue console in this blog post.
So we had a problem – and I scoured the house to see if I could find anything else that was going to be wide enough for the TV to stand on and I already knew the answer – nope, nada, nothing!
Except … there was that piece of timber that used to be a table top of some sort, that I’ve been using when I stage items to be photographed for sale. Instead of using the workshop floor, which is some kind of epoxy garage floor finish, I would place this timber table top down to make it look like the piece of furniture was on a wood floor. Like this:
And this … yep – just a table top laying on the floor!
Farmhouse Coffee table top
This old table top was EXACTLY the right size for our TV – perfect solution to our problem. So we set to work sanding back the old finish on it, which actually took almost forever! I knew I should have used stripper, but honestly thought it would sand off fairly easily. Ah well, it’s done now, but the pic below was taken half way through the sand-off.
Farmhouse coffee table plans by ana white:
I then searched the internet for some Farmhouse coffee table plans that I could show Marty’s dad to see if he could help me build a base for the table top. I love the look of the tables with the cross beams on each end, so was after something with that in mind. Introducing the lovely, Ana White, who’s amazing resources for all things farmhouse and DIY are an inspiration! Click on the image below to take you to Ana’s website – the plan that we based our coffee table on is this table here:
Ana White includes detailed plans, along with a step by step video tutorial to a lot of her plans. Like I said, we used the plans above as a basis for our farmhouse coffee table, but we had to lengthen ours slightly to match the table top, which happened to be longer than the plans, but the same width.
Scored some Cheap timber!
One day while at our local recycle market, I came across all this timber that looked as though it came from a building site. Some pieces had screw holes in them and a couple had one or two staples. Easy fix, and so a quick call to Dad Hankins and we managed to find several pieces that would suit our farmhouse coffee table. We must’ve gathered about 10 or more of these long struts and purchased the lot for $10 (AUD). How good is that!? Much cheaper than our local hardware store!
We purchased a couple of additional timber pieces and screws from our local hardware shop and Dad was ready to start work on building our Farmhouse Coffee Table (aka TV console).
One of the tricky bits was fitting the cross beams at each end and measuring them correctly, but Ana White explains all the steps in her post.
I decided it would be easier to prime the base slats before Dad screwed them in place along the bottom of the table, so I did that, and while I was there, also painted the base frame with an undercoat of Zinsser BIN Primer & Stain Blocker. The reason I used Zinsser BIN as an undercoat is that I was working with a variation of old pine and some was treated, others weren’t, so I didn’t want to risk any bleed through.
In the video below, I shared with my Facebook page audience, an update on the Farmhouse Coffee table and a little about the plans I was using, priming with the Zinsser, and a little on the table top and how I filled a couple of gaps in the surface.
Once I had painted the entire base in two coats of Fusion’s Casement – a nice crisp white – we were ready to screw the old table top in place.
Staining the table top
I used Fusion’s Cappuccino colour in their all-in-one Stain & Finishing Oil which gives a lovely stain and seals it at the same time. Here’s exactly how I stained the table in this replay of another Facebook Live from my page:
Here’s the finished table. I’m so happy with how it turned out.
