To keep a short story short, we recently decided our big, round dining table was taking up too much space. As a replacement, we agreed to sacrifice the aesthetics of our coffee table in hopes that it would become something greater (you should have seen it before it was sanded and stained… ugh!).
The coffee table originally had a glass top, but that got left behind during our move from the Midwest to the West Coast. There is a raised edge around the whole table top, so we wanted to add a little something to make the entire tabletop flush. Tile seemed like the best option.
Rather than the old days of pilfering through a collection of tiles and mixing and matching (I'm imagining that’s what was done back then!), modern tile sets are attached to a mesh backing, with enough space between them for grout. If the tile sheets are too big, you can just cut the mesh and eliminate however many rows of tiles you need. It's just so easy these days.
Another thing that makes this process easy is double-sided, adhesive sheets. The idea is like double-sided tape, but bigger and more heavy duty. In this case, we slapped some of those sheets down on the table surface, laid the tile down on top of that, applied the grout, and voila! In retrospect, there was more time and thought that ultimately went into this process than I am probably making it seem. Yet, it was simpler than I had expected.
We were concerned about how the tile set would fit in this specific space. We snipped some rows off by cutting the mesh and, luckily, the fit of the tiles was almost perfect. When saying "almost", the alignment ended up being just a little off. It still looks nice, though, and gained a ton of character beyond just the stained look the table previously had.
Next on the "to do" list is finding the right chair set, so we can determine how high the table should be. We don’t mind getting dirty and doing some sanding and staining if we have to... The chairs just need to have a small footprint.
This past weekend, I was biking around L.A. and made a random stop at a thrift store. I happened to find a set of four stools that seemed to work for the table. Being on bike, it would have, of course, been impossible to get them home. Heading back a while later, guess what? Someone didn’t buy all of the them… someone bought just TWO! BLASTED! It was a maddening, yet funny/"of course that's what happened" kind of experience.
So, once we find the right chairs, it should just be a matter of cutting the legs for the table to height, staining, then attaching them. It's like we are so close but yet so far…… and the search continues.
UPDATE:
I found a chair set on Craigslist that works well with the tables. I wasn’t completely sold on the look of the chair backs, but it was a compromise since my wife didn’t like the saddle style chairs I was after. Regardless, the color scheme of these chairs is a great complement to the table, and the seat padding is a nice and comfortable microfiber one. I promise you, this looks better in person:
If you are new to woodworking projects, this part is really important: The width of the coffee table legs were 2″ x 2″, but 1.5″ x 1.5″ wood looked fine at the hardware store, so we brought the lumber home, cut it up, sanded it down, and stained it, only to find that it didn’t look right. Here are the two things we learned from this: 1) If you’re making a table taller, make sure the new legs are at least the same width as the original ones. Otherwise, your table is probably going to end up looking cheap and might be wobbly. 2) If you need 2″ x 2″ wood, you can’t just saw a 2×4 in half because 2x4s aren’t actually 2″ x 4″!!! Rather, they’re in the neighborhood of 1 1/2″ x 3 1/2″. Strange, I know, and I can’t tell you why…. but it’s true.
We visited three hardware stores, and finally discovered (thanks to the helpful folks at Anawalt Lumber in Hollywood) that we could have them saw a 4×4 board (which is actually 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″) down the 2″ square that we really needed.
(11/7/12):
So, with the new legs, we’ve finally finished sanding and staining and all that jazz. What a learning process this has been. In such projects, it’s nice to know what you’ve done wrong, yet it would really be even better knowing beforehand what isn't going to work. In that sense, hopefully this post is helpful for you.
Doing a lot of research throughout this whole process, we determined the tabletop is probably oak... it's not. The taller legs we had cut are definitely from that type of tree and, after applying stain, it doesn't quite match. It's close and still looks nice, but these are different types of wood.
As a final note, we changed the placement of the legs. Originally they were about 6″ from either end of the table and also set a few inches inward from the front and back edges. To accommodate extra chairs, the legs are now at each corner of the table, making it all a little more spacious.
So there it is, another project in the books. If you have any questions about this table conversion, don't hesitate to leave a comment below.
"How-to: DIY Wood Coffee Table to Dining Table Conversion"
Written by: Justin Kilmer
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