Building Your Personal Oak Coffee Table

Building an oak coffee table is not that hard to do even if you are only at a “wood butcher” level of carpenter skills. The process of building a coffee table is not very complex and if you are not worried about making a fabulous piece of art than you should do fine.

Acquiring the elements to make an oak coffee table will probably be the hardest part of the job and this being said, they are not hard to get. Building a coffee table should only take about 5-6 hours to complete once you have all the tools and materials. All you will need is lumber (in this instance oak), glue, a saw, jigsaw, and the most primary carpenter tools to get started and make your own oak coffee table.

For the finalizing process you will need stain, finish, and a paintbrush. Making your own oak coffee table can be a good way to test or sharpen your intermediate skills of designing and building your own creation with wood. This can be very rewarding in several aspects, for you, the living room and your self confidence as a carpenter.

An oak coffee table is easy, but like everything there are many instances that could have the “Apples to Apples” syndrome. You can have one coffee table that is exquisite with hand carved designs in and around the wood and others are just simple and box cut like a standard square, four legs, and a table top oak coffee table.

If you are an intermediate carpenter, chances are you will not be adding any hand carved designs or templates. Just a simple cut and sand for more novice carpenters will usually suffice.

An oak coffee table is easy to build because there is really nothing to it. Once you cut the legs and the top of the table you just need to glue and screw after you sand it to a smooth state. You can choose to stain the pieces of your oak coffee tables before you do this or you can stain when you have assembled the legs and glued. More experienced carpenters will more times than not stain the coffee table before assembling because you get a better application of the stain.

Using cotton t-shirts is the best way to apply stain to a piece of wood. You will want to make sure you clean off all the dust from the sanding before you rub it with the stain.

After you have glued your oak coffee table together and reinforced it with screws in load bearing locations and joints, you will need to use a paintbrush to apply the finish. Stain usually dries in about 30 minutes to an hour so waiting for the stain on your newly assembled coffee table will not be too time consuming.

Once you are ready to finish the oak coffee table, you will want to make sure the stain is dry and looks even because once the finish is on there is no going back unless you want to do more sanding.