I made a thing!

The finished table

Gross shed!

Well here is the beginning of the table even though I didn't know it yet! It started when I bought a pretty gross foreclosure home that had this super nasty spider home shed in the back. It was made of all sorts of misfit wood like pallets and crate lids. Very weird. Halve of the roof had two types of shingles and the other half was just moldy exposed particle board. There were nails and screws sticking out everywhere and it was a serious hazard. I didn't even like looking at it and unfortunately this is the view from our back door.

Boom!

I cut out all the walls and tied a rope around the roof and collapsed it into the yard for demolition. All that foam to the left was packed into the walls of the shed. I don't know why, its like they were planning on being out there enough to try and insulate it?

Floor boards

The only good thing to come of that terrible old shed. I am not one to turn away free lumber and boards this size are expensive(to me, I'm CHEAP) so I kept them around for a couple years. Last summer I really wanted some patio furniture or a picnic table or something since we like to spend our evenings outside BBQing and enjoying the warm weather. Again I am too cheap to actually buy anything so I decided I need to make something and since I had these boards I thought a table would be appropriate. I like to re-use what I can.

Materials

I bought a few sticks of 2X2 .120 wall square steel for the table and 1X1 .120 wall square steel for the benches.

Frame

My wife and I really like simple designs when it comes to furniture so I decided on a very simple frame with all the exposed welds ground flush to give it a clean look. Here is the basic frame before adding the cross braces and grinding down the exposed welds.

Testing

Here I am test fitting the boards and trying to decide on a bench height.

Cross braces

Here I added in the cross braces and drilled all the holes to fasten down the boards from underneath. I ended up using some short stainless hardware from the HoDep.

Learning

Using this project as chance to practice welding. Still not very good! Lots of boogers!

Smooooooooth

Bench design

Here is the basic bench design. In this picture the cross braces are not in but I installed them the same way as the rest of the table. Just some 1X1 angle iron with holes drilled for fasteners.

Primer applied

I used a Rustoleum clean metal primer and decided on the roll on hammered black for the rest. The hammered black dries to more of a gun metal color which is exactly what I was after. Rolling the paint on meant I could do it in the shop without having to put plastic on everything.

Paint rolled on

Detail

Here is a close up of the hammered finish. I know some people will think I ruined it by using the hammered finish but I really like the way the roll on hammered finish looks plus I don't have to spend days trying to make the surface perfect like I would if I used a normal gloss finish.

Quick sanding job

Here I hit the boards with some course sand paper to remove any jagged edges and chances for splinters. I did not make them perfect, I wanted them to have some character.

Staining the boards

Attach boards!

Last step was to fasten the boards to the frame!

Corner detail

Cat tax

This is Captain in a bow tie.