Maker Monday: Tampa Street Market Coffee Table

[Charles] Here's a recent custom piece that we made for a Tampa home. The piece was made entirely from salvaged wood and was built to customer specific dimensions. Finding wood that is the correct size and will give the right look can be difficult on short notice, but we turned this table around quickly in just a few weeks.

The top and skirt pieces are pine 3/4" planks that I sanded and biscuited together. The skirt was done in a wrap around primitive table style. This idea was borrowed from many of the old farmhouse tables that we see in our searches. It's a strong method to secure the table without fussy angle cutting and miters. I drilled through the outside pieces and nailed in square nails that I found a while back and have been keeping in the cabinet just for projects like this. They give the piece a nice antique look but have to be predrilled carefully because they are large and tapered with a real tendency to split the wood.

The legs are cypress wood that was taken from a roof beam we purchased at Schiller's Salvage in Tampa. Finding wood for nice sized chunky legs is usually the hard (and expensive) part. Luckily the dimensions of coffee tables are shorter so we don't need as long a piece. The beam was cracked on one end but there was enough good wood to give us four legs. Definitely measure and plan out your idea well before you go searching or you will buy material you can't use. I almost bought both of these beams until we got a confirmation on the table height at the last minute!

Hope you like the piece. I think it turned out really nice. We stained it with a custom mix of stain colors to match the room per the designer's request and finished it with a hand oiled and waxed finish. The oil and wax again add to the antique look and luster of an old piece of furniture. All the little nail holes and damage of the old wood show up better with the stain and help give this table elder statesman cred right away. Thanks for checking it out!