Retirement

DIY improvisation for a patio table

This table was built from a shape I made out of fiberglass in my new bathtub, hence the odd shape. So the countertop is a replica of our shower – if you’re curious, now you know. The legs from the potato tower. They are clicked with 1x1s, also from Potato Tower.

The tools used to build this were my jigsaw, a dovetail saw, mortise chisel, hammer, square, 6 clamps, and block plane.

The bathtub was designed in a largely “standard parts” manner in that it had to match the dimensions of the bathtub exactly. All angles are 45 degrees. It was very difficult to glue them together. The plywood was then cut very large from the bottom/top portion and planed to fit.

The bathtub (inverted) rests on the frame. The frame is built using top tabs. I mounted the legs on the pan and attached the legs to the top tab in a semi-finished way by simply placing a 1×1 on top of the legs, spreading some pencil marks on them. This is the “organic” method when the pieces are fitted together one by one rather than cutting everything first and putting everything together later. This way any errors can usually be corrected in the next step. After gluing the frame together, the shower pan was moved from the bottom (where it supports the legs) to the top. Finished!

It’s a nice, sturdy little table. (The chair is from Free Cycle.)

What is the purpose of this post?

  1. The overall cost was low, but not as low as getting a free table on craigslist or freecycle.
  2. I reused things I already had which kept the cost lower – no shopping needed to build this table.
  3. I’ve taught myself everything I know about woodworking over the past year – while I can’t build pretty things (yet), I can build fairly solid things. And you can too.

Saving does not mean not having a table and sitting on the floor. (I guess that’s what minimalism means ;-P… just kidding!) That means not buying an $89.95 table from a furniture sale at 0% interest for the next 36 months.


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Originally published on 2011-08-28 at 12:31:43.


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