Yay! Our new coffee table is in place and waiting for accessories.
Have you ever watched something on television that starts with a particular scene and then takes you back a few hours or days to show how the characters got to that place? This post will be somewhat like that.
Five days earlier:
For several months, Chelsea and I had been casually searching for a coffee table. Over the course of that time we found a few we liked, but knew we needed to wait until we had the larger pieces of furniture in place. They would dictate size and style.
Once the sofa and chairs arrived, I began using masking tape to mark off various shapes and sizes on the carpet. We finally settled on a square shape somewhere between 40 inches to 48 inches across. That would allow anyone sitting on the sofa or either chair to reach it easily.
Three days earlier:
Searching in earnest for a coffee table, I started to question our assumptions about the size and shape we could actually use. Walking around masking tape outlines was one thing, but would the space feel comfortable with a real object in the room?
Because I have issues, I decided to build a temporary coffee table for testing.
The one in the photo is 48 inches wide, 54 inches long, and 18 inches tall. The masking tape on the test table provided a way to visualize 48 x 48 inches clearly.
While our size estimate followed all of the coffee table spacing rules, it quickly became obvious it didn’t work. The corners were too sharp and it felt like anyone sitting on the sofa was trapped. Also, it was extremely difficult to reach objects near the center of the table.
My next step was to trace a 48-inch circle on the plywood table. The result was encouraging. It eliminated the sharp corners and made the area feel easier to navigate.
Armed with this new information, we looked at round coffee tables between 40 and 48 inches in diameter. The only problem is that we didn’t like any of them. (That and retail coffee tables matching our needed shape and size are obscenely expensive. So really it was two major problems.)
One day earlier:
My mind had been grinding on options to solve the problem. I considered building a coffee table. My woodworking skills aren’t good enough to start from scratch, but what if I bought a round marble top? Could I buy a wooden table top? Wait, why not buy a table and cut it down to size?
Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner!
I expanded my search to include dining tables. When I did, I came across someone selling a 42-inch French-style inlaid dining table. Tres chic!
I showed it to Chelsea and pitched her on the idea that I could remove the fluted section of the legs and reattach the bottom using dowels.
Fortunately, the surgery was a success which leads us back to the beginning of the post:
Yay! Our new coffee table is in place and waiting for accessories.