Frankenstein Series: Part I Craftsman Table

Hey everyone! I’ve been on a recycle, reuse, repurpose kick lately, especially when it comes to scrap wood. We always save the leftovers from tables, panels and backings that we replace and as of now it’s been taking up quite a bit of room in a corner of our garage. With my addiction to Facebook garage sale sites and Offer Up, I haven’t exactly been helping the situation especially when I came across these stair spindles. After Jake went through his 12 step denial process, I finally convinced him that we could make something cool out of these.

I figured these things were sturdy enough to make a small table so thats what we went with. I had a vision of what I wanted this table to look like, but Jake just kind of took this project and went with it on his own. Which is okay with me since we have enough spindles to make a few more tables anyway.

We had to trim about an inch off one end of the spindle, and cut right before the straight edge of the spindle on the other side to shorten the height. The legs were a lot taller than I realized, but we were able to make the cuts in a part that still stabilized the table, and made it look like these started out as legs and not what they really are.

We used two pocket holes on each of the the connectors to secure the spindles to the common board. That seems to be the easiest way to make a quick table especially for beginners.

The top we actually salvaged from our Coastal Blue Classic Dresser, which was replaced with a new top.  We keep all of the old tops to dressers and tables that we replace to use as workshop table tops, or for reasons like this…to reuse on a project where we have to do a little more trim and cleanup. For this one, we just sawed off the bowed edge, filled the major dings and scratches, and sanded smooth.

While we were rummaging through all our scraps, I thought about the old Frankenstein movie where Doctor Frankenstein was taking bits and pieces to create a monster of his own…and I thought about we related at that very moment, even as I was mixing the leftover samples of Fusion Mineral Paint I had to make this color. I decided to call it “Craftsman Green,” since it reminds me so much of the dramatic colors in old Craftsman style homes. Its a teal shade with some grey and blue undertones.

In the end, I was so excited with how this turned out. A bit of distressing just helped to elevate this a notch while the gloss clear coat just made this piece so pretty.

My sister helped me stage this. She loved the detail in the legs and wanted to make sure that was a focal point for this table!

I really love the color on this too. I wish I had paid better attention to the exact measurements of this color recipe, but the whole point was to use everything I had left over. There is just something gratifying about repurposing or reusing something not for it’s intended purpose, but just to make something new with something old.

I hope you guys enjoyed seeing these scraps put to good use. The lady who owns this table now fell in love with it through our Facebook ad and she took it home with her. Im always so happy when customers can be happy with what I thought was a crazy idea!

Linking up to Friday’s Furniture Fix # 47!