We Have Our Ironing Board Back!

We have wanted a console table for our living room for quite some time. Up to now, our console table has been our ironing board! We found some styles we liked on the Internet but none were close to the dimensions we wanted. Therefore, I decided to build one. I have had this goal to learn more about woodworking and this project fit right in. We used white maple for the tabletop, apron and legs and used dark walnut for pegs. Here are pictures I took along the way. It was a great learning experience and it has gotten me more excited about building more pieces.

The tabletop was built using 3/4" thick 2x6 boards with splines between the boards. Using splines may have been overkill but I wanted a solid tabletop that could support a lot of weight.

Here is the table top after it was glued up. I was a bit worried about cupping so I added breadboards to each end of the tabletop. This was something new to me. A breadboard end is a piece of wood that is joined to the end of a larger panel. The purpose is to support and maintain the rigidity of the tabletop, while allowing the tabletop to shrink or expand (due to humidity) across the grain. I cut slots in the tongue of the tabletop and used dark walnut pegs to hold it in place. Also, the breadboards hide the end grain of the tabletop. This feature took a long time but it added a neat detail to the finished table.

The apron and legs were connected with mortise and tenon joints. The mortises were made by drilling and then cutting out the rest with chisels. The tenons were made on the table saw and finished with chisels.

Here is the table base fit-up. The groves along the outer edges of the apron were made using a router with a triple fluted bit. This added a lot of detail to the apron.

In order to connect the tabletop to the base, I used buttons. These allow the tabletop to expand and contract somewhat with humidity.

Here is the completed table!

I really like the look of white maple. The completed table had a lot of wavy grain patterns showing and I wanted to highlight that with the finish. I learned a lot about finishing furniture during this project. The biggest thing I learned is that it is a LOT more involved than I thought. For example, white maple is a difficult wood to stain (should have figured this out before making the table, hey?). Finishing this piece ended up taking just as much time as building it. I sanded the table for a long time and then applied two coats of walnut stain and then five coats of clear polyurethane.

Here is the finished table in its new home. The table turned out great and I am looking forward to building more furniture in the future. The ironing board is now happily back where it belongs and is used as an ironing board just as much as it was when it was a console table.