3 LEVELS of Coffee Tables -DIY to PRO Build

So the first actual furniture piece that all three of us ever built was a coffee table and we figured why not bring three different levels ?

So here you go , Diy all the way to pro baby .

Let's get it .

Hi , I'm Jordan .

I'm gonna be walking you through the beginner coffee table .

All we need is some lumber , a saw and a drill .

Let's get into it .

So what you just saw was me breaking down the lumber .

You can get this already cut down the size .

Our local big box store was just out of two by two .

I had to make my own .

And if you do decide to like break it down like me , it's important that you actually cut it down to the right dimension before going to the because we're gonna have some a and that's gonna mess up your length if you cut on the Microsoft first and then rip them down .

But make sure if you get like a two by six like I did , you rip it first , then you chop it , rip and chop , rip chop .

Now , uh I'm gonna start breaking it down into my smaller pieces and we're gonna start with the base first because the top is really simple .

Let's just get it .

OK .

I got most of my base pieces broken down into smaller pieces .

And so now I'm gonna take those pieces and then cut into those pieces using this pocket hole jig to assemble all the pieces together .

You don't have a pocket hole jig .

You don't need to use this one .

This is just the one I chose to use because it was just easier for me to grab when I was being lazy .

They sell a smaller one that you can get .

You can also do face screws too if you want and then just put over them later .

But so stay with cure is now to go get me the correct screws .

Make sure you have the right line screw for your material thickness .

This should go a little smoother Judd .

If you do decide to use pocket hole joiner for this for the top , make sure the pocket holes are up because you won't see them , they'll be covered by the top for the bottom one .

Make sure they're down because you're not gonna see them because they're three inches off the ground .

No one's going under there .

It's a little building tip for you try and hide your pocket holes , that's real hot tip next up .

These are technically a skirt .

I guess that's a skirt , side skirt or wait front skirt , side skirt .

I don't know .

It's all perspective at this point , I'm gonna take these pieces , attach them like that .

And then this guy gonna go over here , it's gonna go up just like this just like this after pocket holding these .

And if you don't want a pocket home , you could probably Brad new or face .

But this is the method I chose with , let's build it .

So what you're gonna do is actually save your cutoffs from uh the two by two material that's gonna be your spacer block .

So go in like this , not a boom , boom , boom , go to the next one and then work their way up and then our base will be complete .

The bass assembled and glued up , sanded all that jazz .

So next part is do the top .

And what I did was I put my bases relatively where it's gonna be on the top .

Take that and I traced it .

Thought I traced it anyways .

The idea .

Yeah , tracing it that way because we're gonna attach these pocket holes as well .

And um you could do a traditional glow up as well too .

But John said I get that the way we're gonna assemble the base to the top is through the skirts and I just don't want to drill into a pocket hole .

Do you know what time it is ?

What time is it ?

So whenever you're starting to get in the building , a good tip that I picked up , always make things oversized that way .

When you like do like table top glew ups or big panel glue ups .

That way you don't have to rely on your glue up being perfect .

So , as you can see , it's not exactly even .

So luckily I left it long that way I can come back , trim it off and you're good to go update .

We finished .

That was Friday .

I put , stain on it dry over the weekend and I came in this morning and stained the top looks great .

So now what I'm gonna do is attach the base to the top and we're just gonna do that with some screws through skirt here , that should be fine .

And then you could also add some on the side skirts as well .

We'll see .

So right now , I'm just trying to center the base on the top .

I believe it should be 4.5 in on each side .

Ok .

Last step .

Uh I'm gonna hit this thing with some lacquer .

Uh If you don't have a fancy pants machine like us , they sell lacquer in like a rattle can like spray can form , but this will help protect the coffee table over its lifetime from coffee mugs and whatnot .

So , you know what the saying is , let's spray .

That's gonna be it for this one guys .

This was a lot of fun building this beginner coffee table .

We will have plans available for it and if you decide to build mine , tag me on Instagram other than that .

Let's see what Sam's got cooking for those that don't know .

I am Sam .

I will be taking you on the magical journey of the intermediate project .

Today , we are going to make a very Scandinavian kind of modern style coffee table that I found a design online that I wanted to do and make a small scale version .

And Jordan taught me how to use a computer .

Let's get into this .

We are going to use a red oak .

We'll probably stain it like a nice medium brown .

We're gonna use box joints .

Uh All the drawing will be cut probably on the table saw .

I may do some of it with a circular saw just to show you guys how to do some of that .

So let's just make the thing , got everything pretty well known to size .

Some of these pieces are still long .

I always like to leave things long when I'm putting them through the planner and the joiner because there is a chance that it could snipe , which means it leaves like a little thinner spot on the end .

So I always want to give yourself a little room so you can cut that off .

So you don't leave that in your project .

This project though , it's pretty simple .

The devils in the details of like , really take your time to make sure your boards are nice and flat and square and jointed because of the way this design is .

It's really important that these are like , really , really nice .

So don't rush through it .

Take your time .

The other thing to note is that when I did the two , the four pieces for the top , I left these a hair thicker .

It'll fit through the planner once they're glued up and they are two separate pieces .

So it's always better to be able to run them through and then they'll be a perfectly smooth surface .

Uh it'll be easier as far as sanding and glue , clean up and all of that stuff .

So the next thing we're doing is I spent a little bit of time and I really want to make sure this looks as good as possible .

So I flipped around some of the material ideally , I wish it was all quarters on like this piece .

Uh Unfortunately , dealing with what we have , uh , and making lemonade .

I don't have those options , but I think this combination of things glue up quite nicely .

But these give you a nice even glue layout because you don't really need that much glue when you're gluing something up .

I think the type on people told us it's only one molecule between two pieces of wood is enough to make it stick .

I could be wrong with that .

So don't go crazy .

The other thing to note here is because they are just two pretty thick boards .

I'm not going to do any kind of biscuits or dominos or anything .

I don't think it's necessary for a project like this .

What you could if you're worried about the alignment , but I trust myself to be able to line up two pieces of wood .

So we are now to the point of doing the box joints uh to do .

So we have a half inch data stack with our half inch box joint jig .

Uh This is , didn't think this through quite right .

So we're gonna have to get a little bit squarely , but that's after the course here .

Fortunately , because of the way this sled was made using three quarter inch material and this data stack and this all combination , the blade doesn't quite get tall enough .

So I'm gonna have to touch them up with a router .

It's less than ideal , but I think it's the only way to do it because I otherwise I have to remake this sled with like a half inch bottom or do like some sort of sacrificial fence cross cut .

So I think this is the right way to do it still .

So to do this , as you can see , I have a half inch slot , a half inch gap and then a half inch like tooth kind of thing .

So you have your verticals and your horizontals , one of them , you start on the line of this gap here and then the other one , you start against the tooth that way , you know , they're offset and they lock together and keep perfect alignment .

So the other thing to keep in mind is you want to keep track of how everything goes .

You don't want to rotate your piece this way .

When you're doing this , you want to rotate it this way so that you keep the same side because otherwise you'll get them backwards and the whole thing will be skewed .

So it's important , I'm going to do all of these pieces first and then make those pieces according to it .

But I want to go nice and slow and focus on what I'm doing here , as I earlier stated because of the way that jig was made and the material sizes and all of that pieces aren't quite cut deep enough .

As you can see here , we're about a quarter of an inch , maybe a little less .

So we took , this is a jig John uses for when he cuts , dovetails to clear out the pins .

I'm gonna use it with just a straight cut bearing bit to try to clean out this part .

So I have this set to the right height .

I hope this works , but we're gonna try it .

So I got these all cleaned up as you just saw and then I laid out some jewelry .

I laid out the half laps by finding the center of this and then I centered my half lap joint off of this .

So I found the center line there and then I went , you know , half the distance of my material in each direction .

And then I actually traced the material .

I gave myself a little reference marks , but then I actually traced it by laying it on here with a square and drawing deep into that corner .

So I have an actual this thickness versus a measurement because it doesn't matter what the measurement , I think it is , it has to be this way .

You start worrying about things being the same and fitting versus like what the measurement is supposed to be .

Now that I have those laid out , I left this data stack in , I got this set to three quarters because that's half of my inch and a half thick material .

And now I have reference marks on the side so I can then take it and I can line it up there .

I've already made sure this is nice and square with a test piece and then I'll cut this side and then I'll cut that side , then I'll hog out the middle and then we'll prove that it fits .

And if it needs any adjusting , we can come back to it .

You're not 100% sure where you're at , cut it a little bit smaller and creep out to it and then cut it bigger and then have it loose because this is important that it's a really tight fit .

It is now time to do kind of a complex glue , kind of a stressful glue .

For being honest , there's a lot of surfaces in these little finger joints , box joints , I still don't know what the hell they're called , but it does make for a really strong joint because of all the surface area when you do get all the glue in there , but it's a lot to get glue on quickly .

So it can be a little stressful if you lay everything out and then if you have someone that can help you or at least film you and heckle you , it helps .

Typically you only need to glue one side of a joint .

But I always like to glue both sides of this just to make sure you get it all because it's , it's so easy to miss a spot .

It's the next morning I pulled these out of clamps .

I got one of them locked up in the vice , the glue ups .

Ok .

I wish it was a little bit better , but we'll , uh , address that when we get to it .

So the next part is it just sharpened up a hand plan .

This is a fancy Lee Nielsen one , but you can use anything just to heighten up the fit on these .

So I have these all labeled .

So I know which one will live where and then I'm taking the time to tune each one to its spot .

So this one's fitting pretty good .

My heights on my half laps are off just a little bit .

So I'm just cleaning them down , touching them up and getting this one to see this one fits pretty good .

Now , I got to do the other side and we'll get it all ready for the second glue up .

Get that glued up , then we'll work on the top some more .

Get those things sanded and ready .

Maybe even put some finish on those .

Shouldn't be too much longer before we have ourselves .

Ok .

We have one more glue up .

We gotta connect all the pieces .

I took a little bit of time off camera to sand out any sort of layout marks or glue or anything .

It would be hard to get to after I didn't do like a full perfect sand that's like finish ready .

But I wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything that was gonna be hard to get to later for the final glue up , get this thing ready for glue .

We'll let it sit for a few hours and then we'll put the top on it and finish it .

We're getting pretty close .

So we've got this thing mocked up .

The top is not attached yet , but it's got everything pretty much sanded final standing .

And that's sort of the love I actually really liking .

This is red oak , but for some reason , it's not very red .

It's got way more of like a white oak kind of vibe going on .

I'm not really sure what's going on there .

I still think I'm gonna make it brown , have this like nice medium brown tone that I think will look really nice on it .

So we're gonna do that and I have to do at least part of the finish before I can assemble it because this is going to be like a split top design as seen in that graphic .

So because of that , I can't get the finish down into the middle part very easily after it's assembled .

So I think I'm gonna prefinish everything , then I'll drill all the holes , touch up anything that I ruin in the process .

And then we'll put the whole thing together and we should have this thing done in the next couple of hours .

Now , for everybody's favorite part .

Caramel glaze .

Now we're gonna put Rubio on this .

I've tried the samples of the colored rubio and we just didn't have a brown that spooked me .

I'm just using regular old Rubio on top .

That was a lot .

Final thing to do is drill some holes for the threaded inserts , got some bolts , got the threaded inserts .

I'm gonna do a little counter sink with a bit , hide the bolt heads .

I'm just gonna do eight total four on each side just to kind of even out the load .

I've got it lined up with pencil in between is the gap and pushed together and then I measure a bunch of times to center it .

So it's exactly where I want it to be right now .

So first I'll do the force center a bit and then I'll drill because that'll leave the perfect center in that bolt .

Then I'll drill through for the actual hole itself .

Oh , we don't make light furniture in this place .

Oh , holy crap .

That my friends is a woodworking project .

If you guys want to make this coffee table , there's a plan down below .

If you make it , I'd love to see it .

So find me through the interwebs and tell me about it .

Now , let's see what John has to make for the pro level coffee table .

We're going to go with a Nakashima style table , which I absolutely love .

I used to do a ton of live edge furniture and it's in fashion .

So we're gonna do some live edge breakdown as well as construction all from the same slab , which should be a lot of fun .

So let's get to it .

So I've got a walnut slab here and this is called a crotch .

The jokes .

I want that to be the kind of the focus on the top of the table .

Nakashima style .

Typically he uses a lot of like figured woods in his building .

Um and projects .

If you're not familiar dude is a little bit , I like to make my tables around 40 inches in the top .

So I'm gonna make a line here at 42 from that end and I'm gonna just quickly find the line center here here .

It's all rough .

I'll get the flattening after this , but I got a pretty cool concept .

Of what I'm gonna do here .

I'm stoked to show you guys .

All right .

So this is essentially going to be the rough shape of the table top .

What I'm gonna do next is put it on the floor because I'm going to use a software to take a photo of it , then draw a CAD model , which is awesome .

So we're super pumped for this build to have a sponsor Shaper 3D , which is a 3D CAD modeling software that's incredibly easy to use .

Jordan's been using it for months to do a lot of stuff for us .

And I'm super excited .

So I got this on the floor .

So I'm going to take a photo of the slab overhead and then when you use the photo , it comes into the model itself .

So I'll click the little point there and it , you're gonna , you can change the way and now using trees and then when you get to the curve add pressure with that .

So what we're doing here is you can see is tracing out our slap , which is awesome .

And it truly goes to show how intuitive a piece of software like this can be .

We're drawing on an ipad .

It's available on Mac , which we all use .

Our whole business is based on Mac and this guy they did just release it on Windows , which is awesome .

So we use 3D models for just about everything .

When we do custom jobs , it absolutely changes our proposal process and just creates a much more professional dynamic .

If you're not using a 3D software for your planning , you're probably wasting a lot more materials than necessary .

And it also gets a little bit clunky in my opinion , when you're trying to send proposals or drawings or whatever to potential clients .

So I highly suggest using a CAD software and I definitely suggest using shape or 3D and they're so cool that they're going to give you a 10% discount on the site by using the code Maleki 10 and check it out .

It's awesome .

We're big fans of it around here , all three of us do our projects for this build specifically and like I said , we've been using it for months .

It's been awesome .

So I'm gonna get back to designing what I'm thinking in my head and thank you Shaper 3d for sponsoring this build .

So after like 15 minutes , as you can see , we've got an augmented reality , but you can kind of see what the table would look like and you can walk around it too , which is cool .

Yeah .

So before we use anything , we need to get it flattened , we're gonna use AC NC .

But I have , I don't even know how many videos of hand flattening slabs .

If you don't have AC NC , you can do that .

Got to flatten it on both sides .

We're gonna use Miss Piggy because we got her .

But you can do this on your own .

I've got a video that shows you how to build a jig , how to use one that you pre bought .

It's all good .

Get it flat and then we'll get the work .

So this piece is super rough .

Still .

I'm gonna run it through the cleaner , but I wanna make sure that I don't have any side to side rocking .

So I'm just taking off the high spots you can see , I'm just trying to get rid of that before I put it in .

All right .

So we need to mortis this into the bottom of the table .

You can see here .

I drew some lines and picked a location that I want to put it in .

Now , I'm gonna build a quick little router jig that I can use a templating bit and get the perfect sized mortis for this leg here .

I'll be waiting here this evening and then we're gonna need the router jig that goes in the track .

So now we're gonna set up the router .

This is the same Plywood here .

I'm gonna get it set up to cut a half inch deep mortis and then we're off to the races .

You are in the Festal track , right ?

So our top bearing bit is pretty old and dull , switching over to an up spiral bit that will remove most of the waste , stay inside my pocket and then I'll trim up just the edges with that and it should be good .

All right .

We cleaned up the corners .

Now , let's peel it off and make another one for the next stupid left hand put in torn currently , like what I want to do because originally I had just like two legs at an angle that I was going to taper , which I still think would look pretty good .

I like having as many as minimum points of contact with the floor as possible because if the floor is out of whack , then the table doesn't sit well , but a coffee table specifically sits on a rug .

So another part of me thinks that like maybe something like this will look cool .

Can you squeeze kind of Jordan on the double some ?

Feel the burn .

John , feel the burn .

He just dated myself .

All right , I made a little template here of something I wanted to look at first , I highly suggest that when you're building like an organic piece and there's a couple of styles , Nakashima tables that are around the internet , I haven't done a deep dive or deep study .

So I hope I'm not being ignorant to traditional style , but because this has a crotch in it , I kind of like this double leg vibe that I've seen a couple of people do .

So I need to make these legs , but then I need to Morice them in which is not something I normally do .

So we're gonna figure this out as we go .

No , no , no , no .

Cheetos , one of the last things I want to do is on this big chunky arm is add a little detail at the bottom to get a little relief .

Any time I build a table , I like to get at least three points of contact , but I don't like to have large , like long pieces of wood laying on the ground where we are in Pittsburgh .

You're very rarely going to find a floor that's flat .

So we by making this detail will have less surface area that's going to touch the floor , which should be nice .

We did a bow tie in LA for tiktok already .

Right .

Yeah .

Don't you remember it ?

Got like a million views or something ?

Probably did get a million views , right .

They all saw it .

Oh , you followed me on tiktok .

Thank you .

We already did this on there .

So , and I have a full video .

So we're gonna do a little bow tie because I feel like when you have cracks and you have , uh , the opportunity to film them , I like the look of bowties and this is my piece of furniture .

So I'm gonna put one in and if you haven't seen , we've got a video on bow tie in Las .

I think we actually updated it last year .

Right .

Sam .

Yeah , we did one recently .

We did have an old , old , old , I got an old , old one , but I use the same now for what seems to be a complicated look because it is .

Wish us luck .

Nakashima would have never used Lacquer , but I'm not him .

So let us spray and that's gonna be a wrap on this one .

I really like how these three turned out and I gotta say , I think my favorite one is Sam .

So Killer job .

Sam .

Let me know which one yns like the most .

And if you want to see more three levels , I got a whole play this for you right here .