DIY Crate Coffee Table

For the wedding we are having a lounge area in the saloon (what a hilarious sentence). We are renting this orange-y couch and gray side chair for the area as well as bringing our own blue side chair that we love. To complete the area we needed a coffee table and I thought that building one of the Micheal's crates would be awesome. However, the tutorials out there on the web leave a TON to be desired in terms of, oh, I don't know, actual directions! I will attempt to be thorough where others have failed (a bold proposition I admit).

You will need:

• 4 crates from Michael's
• Stain of your choice
• Numerous 5/8 depth wood screws (at least 16) to connect the crates to one another and the crate square to the plywood (you could also use a nail gun in spots for extra security/stability)
• 4 caster wheels that can lock
• A large piece of plywood cut to the perimeter of your crates (ours was 30 x 30 inches).
• EITHER extra plywood or scrap wood to fill in the hole in the middle of the table to create a shelf
• 4 L- brackets to attach the center piece of plywood to create a shelf in the middle

When selecting your crates, lay them all out at the store and on their sides to make sure they are the same height.

We first stained all of the crates back in November. Yeah, you read that right. November. And then we bought a house and then it got cold and then it stayed cold and this project was priority number 17. We used Jacobean by Mixwax. We finally went and got the plywood we needed for the base and stained that too.

Now, to measure out your plywood base, you need to lay out your crates with all of the openings facing out like this: (like I mentioned ours was 30 x 30) Once you've attached your crates to the base using 5/8 depth screws and/or nails, it should look like so (be cautious not to over torque cause you will split the wood). Slow and steady friends: You might have noticed this little hole in the middle of the crates once you attached them to the base. Well, we had a few extra slates from a crate that broke (oops) and used nails to attach the slats to the hole to create shelfy-thing. If you didn't break a crate (go YOU!) then just use some extra plywood cut down to the hole's measurements and use the L brackets to attach the plywood. Basically, you'll want to create a shelf there, otherwise it will be a hole in the middle of the table that goes all the way down to the plywood. Depending on what you want to put in the middle, not having a shelf space might be the perfect depth for you. Once you've sufficiently jimmy rigged your shelf, you've gotta attach the casters. In order to find screws with heads large enough to prevent them from going through the openings of the casters, we had to go with one inch wood screws. This meant running the risk of going all the way through the wood. For piece of mind, we used a washer to space it out and prevent it from penetrating the top of the plywood.

However if you get smaller casters, with smaller mounting holes, it shouldn't be a problem. Shew.

So who's confused? Any questions? I also think that this coffee table would make a good craft storage table with all of the open shelving on the sides and its spin-ability. *LB helped write this post!!! He's officially working on the blog now. Woop.

Also on Whatever Goes Wednesday!