Lets try out woodworking!

The beginning of the coffee table. Reading the new jigsaw instructions.

Sorry everyone! It has been a while since I last posted. Instead of adding new blog articles I have been taking over a friends garage and doing some woodworking. Or at least trying to! 

I was pretty lucky growing up having a handy dad who wanted to teach us about cars and woodworking. Neither of my brothers took an interest in these things but I always liked being able to make something tangible when I could. Which is funny given my day to day occupation as an IT project Manager. 😂

So one day I woke up and decided to build a coffee table. I read a couple of articles online about how you could easily use old pallets to create a table and you could do it in an afternoon. (HAHAHAHAHA) Yeah I learnt my lesson when it took me a couple of days!

Luckily for me I have amazing friends who have let me use their garage as a workshop. 

First step: Making sure I had a few tools. Again I am fortunate to have friends who are also into DIY. 

First coat of varnish / stain.

Second step: Obtaining wood pellets. So it turns out the usual full size pallet does NOT fit into the back of a suzuki swift. (who would have guessed) However the friendly folk at Mitre10 in Petone had a couple of smaller ones that fit perfectly. 

Third step: Dismantle one of the pallets. If they had been similar in size I probably wouldn't have bothered but they were very different sizes! 

Fourth step: Stare at the wood I have. After cutting one of the pallets and sanding everything including the wood from the dismantled one it took a bit of staring before I fully pictured how it was going to be. 

Fifth step: Continue to stare....

Add lego dimensions figures and we are done!!

Sixth step: Screw together wood pieces in a way that will kind of look like it will work as a coffee table.

Seventh step: Sand everything! I don't like sharp corners on anything because I tend to ram my leg into this when I'm not paying enough attention.

Eighth step: Stain and varnish. Another yay for easily being able to pick this out at Mitre10. The information they have around their products to help you work out what you need is extremely helpful!

Ninth step: Attach wheels (also known as casters) to the bottom. I am soooo glad I did this because it is a rather sturdy (read massively heavy) coffee table. 

Tenth step: move it into the house and start putting lego dimensions figures on top. 

End result: Is it perfect? Oh hell no. This you can see from the photos above. However is it perfect for me and my living room? Yup!