....for my 22 year old daughter moving into her first apartment", he says. A friend of mine approached me about building his daughter some furniture for the living room of her new apartment. The new stuff they'd looked at was per his comments, "Crap, and expensive". They also had looked on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, but found nothing they liked that wasn't beat up. Soooooo his requirements for me were as follows....

1 - Needed to be durable (no particleboard or MDF).
2 - Preferred all pieces to be matching.
3 - Total build needed to be relatively inexpensive.
4 - Wanted it sized to the space (full sized furniture would crowd the small space of the apartment.)

Now the kicker. He wanted it built at his house over a couple weekends meaning I couldn't really use any of my stationary tools (i.e. no table saw, router table, band saw, assembly table, etc). Only hand tools for this build, and working on top of sawhorses or on the ground.

I hand sketched a couple simple designs, got a thumbs up, and acquired the materials. This is what I came up with. All made out of 3/4" birch plywood, edge banded where necessary to cover up the exposed plywood edges. Sherwin Williams neutral color on the bases (thank god I could use my HVLP sprayer for all the finish work) with Walnut stained and poly'd tops. All pieces are sitting on black metal hairpin legs ordered from Amazon (I love 60's period stuff and apparently so did they). The lift top coffee table with storage below was a design surprise I added that everyone really liked. Never can have too much storage, right? The length of the drawer in the end table (which is quite long) was dictated by a pair of full extension slides I had floating around my shop I threw into the build.

So here are the final pics. Not too bad for being really handicapped on tools. Haven't built anything this way in a very long time, and truth be told, I don't want to again anytime soon.

Coffee Table





TV Stand (for 65" TV)
(Baskets were something mom bought and contributed and I build them into the design)



End Table w/ drawer

This sounded like a 'Pitch your Bitch'.

I thought you were going to tell your friend to get bent.

quote:

Originally posted by iron chef:
This sounded like a 'Pitch your Bitch'.

I thought you were going to tell your friend to get bent.

Nope. He's an old friend and his daughter is terrific, so wherever I could help, I thought I'd try.

Nice looking furniture. You’re a true friend.

Heck of a job you did there. I'm sure she will enjoy them.

Very well done particularly with the tools you had available. I'll admit I enjoy making project's like this, but typically refrain from it due to time constraints and until recently didn't have a table saw. I'm hoping to tackle some projects similar to this when we build our addition.

I hope she appreciated your work that went into it.

This is what I would call having “Mad Skills”!!! Have a buddy like this that can do ANYTHING with a wood shop and electricity/electronics. Y’all are gifted beyond belief in my eyes!!

That is BEAUTIFUL stuff and will last!!

I was thinking "oh, no... the bad news is coming"

Then it was all good!

Excellent job! You are a good friend and skilled woodworker.

Great looking furniture! What kind of wood are the tops made out of, and were pieces of it glued together to make it wide enough?

sweet, nice contemp. furniture. Job done well.

Those are really sharp looking and so much better than buying cheap foreign made throw away after a few years furniture.

I get that you wanted to build the furniture but I don't understand your friend's requirement or your willingness to build away from your shop. Seems an unnecessary complication that could result in lower quality (or more work for you). Am I missing something?

BTW, the finished items look great.

You left out “nice” before furniture in your topic line! Well done, in both design/style and execution.

Good looking pieces, much better than what you find at many stores.. Way better than iKea

Very nice work!
I particularly like the hinged coffee table top. Very useful.

quote:

Now the kicker. He wanted it built at his house over a couple weekends meaning I couldn't really use any of my stationary tools (i.e. no table saw, router table, band saw, assembly table, etc). Only hand tools for this build, and working on top of sawhorses or on the ground.

I imagine there must have been some reasons for that request, and for your having agreed to it. But offhand, I can't think of what those might have been.

Nice work on the design/execution!

Very nice work!

A very fine job! And you are a true friend.

flashguy

Great work!