For the last year or so, I’ve had a vision in my head of building a really awesome crate table. I’ve been “liking” pictures of crates in Instagram and clipping pictures of them from magazines. (I’m actually staring at one of the magazine clippings hanging on my message center right now.) …. 😉
I finally decided to build one this week using a couple of ideas I hadn’t really seen done yet.
We (well… “I”) have a huge pile of scrap wood in our basement left over from our barn house renovation, so I knew I could scrounge up the perfect material to build this little end table. I used a mix of old pine floor boards, window trim cut offs, and a big hunk of plywood sub-flooring that I had kept. All of it 3/4″ thick.
I kept the design simple by screwing the boards together with flat butt joints, but I did at a little “twist” to make it a little more interesting. And my favorite part of the whole table is the totally rough & tumble, industrial style finish I got by keeping all the wood “as I found it” raw.
The pine floor boards still have all the scratches & nail holes, and the plywood still has some of the factory printing and tons of ready made texture. There’s no stain, no paint, no clearcoat …. nothing! It’s been left alone to continue gathering more patina over time. However, I did decide to add just a little bling by installing some awesome clear casters with blue rubber treads that I got from CoolCasters.com.
Here’s Video Part 1:
Here’s Video Part 2:
In the videos, I mentioned that I would make some graphics showing you all the part dimensions, so you could build one too if you wanted. So here’s the dimensions for both the “twisted” style table I made and for a more “traditional” design, if you prefer that.
“Twisted” Crate Parts Dimensions:
“Traditional” Crate Parts Dimensions:
So, there you go! What do you think?
I’ve been wanting to build one of these for a long time, and I think it turned out awesome! It was simple enough, that I think I’ll build a couple more and play around with sizes and different types of legs. I could see a little longer one as a coffee table with cool little spindle style mid century legs or even a one as a tv stand with some hairpin legs. I can also imagine playing around with other types of wood, maybe some distressed paint finishes, different shades of stains, etc, etc. Tons of possibilities.
Later!
– Kevin
