Starting a walnut table

We added a couch. It's a big couch, an L shaped sectional sofa that's 10' long on each side. This couch has spurred about 17,538 other projects since we got it! The fabric clashed with the wall color, so we still haven't decided what color to repaint the living room. Somehow the couch led to the kids agreeing to switch bedrooms, so now I have to paint 2 other bedrooms and build a bunch of furniture for their rooms, including renovating the upstairs bath which prompted that shiplap wall from my last post.

We measured the couch at the store at 9' long, and that meant we had enough room on this one wall to fit the couch next to a red double recliner. How did that turn out you might ask?

before - we got rid of the brown couch on the left and the corner cabinet

The red recliner - almost - fits

The only corner that could hold the new couch

This left me with a size problem. The red double recliner would only fit upstairs in the guest bedroom if we got rid of the king-sized bed up there. Since my mom is the only out of town guest we ever have, and she only comes up once a year, it seemed safe to take the king bed down to SC to their house to free up the space. Then my eldest had the idea to move her bed upstairs and all of her furniture. But she wants to take all of the video game systems upstairs too so I had to paint the room, fix the baseboard, and wall mount a new tv. It's going to be totally bomb when I'm done, yes. Also I have to make that bathroom functional again too, hence that remodel.

The youngest daughter is still afraid to be by herself, ever. Like, she's almost a teenager and still won't go to into her own room alone. it's absurd. But she agreed that she would let the elder move upstairs IF I she got to paint the room pink, got all of her own furniture down there, and I custom build her a desk for makeup with lots of drawers and a big mirror with lights. She also wants a wall-mounted tv to watch youtube stuff. So there's that.

The wife thought if we were going to put new tv's in the other bedrooms, we should get one too. So now I'm up to 3 tv's, a bathroom remodel, painting 3 rooms and the bathroom, and building a desk. Plus moving more kid furniture than I had ever bargained for when we bought the damn couch. Meanwhile I have my brown recliner next to the couch (in the left of the bottom photo above) and no end tables that would fit appropriately between the two.

And since I was recovering from surgery I couldn't lift anything heavier than 10 lbs. This seems like a good time to build a table that is just the right size! Once I felt like I could safely lift a single board again, I went to a local Klingspor's woodshop in Cary. I was looking for something like Cherry or Maple, something that would give me a figured top. They ended up having some kiln-dried walnut that looked ok for $12/bf, but most of the stacks of that and other appealing (read: less expensive) lumber types were only in 12'-16' lengths. Then I stumbled on a stack of 8' or shorter air-dried walnut that was only $8 per boardfoot. It's all very rough cut, straight off of the sawmill stuff. I picked up 3 boards, and ended up returning the short one because I didn't need it.

My 3 boards

I wanted something at least 7.5" wide and pretty clear so I could glue up a 15" wide top, around 22" long. Then I need to cut out some legs, so I wanted to start with something thick. I ended up cutting 2 sets of legs and gluing them together to get the thickness I wanted. So I roughly cut the pieces to length out of the 2 long boards and got everything ready for the planer.

rough cuts!

one sweaty happy woodworker!

The table and sides are roughly cut to length

Out of the planer and starting to look like something I can use

My plan was to cut the top from 2 lengths and glue it up on a long side with biscuits. Then I could make a box for a drawer and some legs. If there's enough left over, make some stretchers between the bottom of the legs and maybe a shelf for down there.

In this project I wanted to try some things for the first time
- mortise and tenon joinery to get the sides into the legs
- dovetail joints in the box for the drawer.
- edge gluing a top
- side gluing for thickness in the legs

This is going to be a lot of fun.