Last Monday I was asked by a nice lady living in an assisted living home (very nice one) if I could build her a table to put under her window. She whipped out the LL Bean catalog and on page 34 she pointed to the underwindow bookshelf. I told her I would give it a try. Well it came out larger than the LL Bean version as mine is 44″ long, 28″ high and 14 ” wide. You can see it at this link: http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/13930?feat=504183-GN3&page=mission-under-…
I think it came out looking pretty good. Especially when you consider it cost at least $100 less than the catalog version and is not a kit.
Here is a breakdown of the cost:
Stain, Oil Finish, Poly : $15
Screws, Sandpaper, rags, glue, misc: $10
Project Boards for shelves and top quality board for the top: $43
Legs: $8
Stretchers, vertical dividers: $22
For a total of $99 and that includes tax.
Two afternoons to collect the lumber and build the table. Three days to complete the finish. So total time figure 5 days.
For the top, end and top and front top stretchers and vertical dividers I used the extra cost pine. The legs are the standard fence 2x2s. The rest is project boards and regular cost pine. For this build I should have spent the extra money and bought the extra cost pine, but live and learn. It probably would have added another $20 to the cost that was already over $90.
The build went fine and I think the result is great. However the stain was a problem. The different grades and types of wood resulted in varying results even though I did use a pre-conditioner. The basic stain was Rust-Oleum Ultimate Golden Mahogany with a little Rust-Oleum Kona mixed in to darken it a bit. I put two coats of Rust-Oleum Ultimate Polyurethane on the top and the remainder of the build was finished with two coats of Minwax Antique Oil finish. The oil finish did remove some of my displeasure with the stain result.
I had some stray corner protectors that I added at the end of the build and finishing.
