March 2023

Display Case Side Table
 

This was a collaboration project with my niece. She wanted to build a side table that had an embedded display case and asked me to help. I felt honored to have been asked to help and it was great to spend some quality time with her. Kudos to her for doing most of the scraping and sanding as that’s one of my least favorite tasks ;-)

 

Found on Marketplace for $40 and was initially painted grey; including the hardware. It had a solid top and a single wobbly drawer. When we got it back to the shop and knocked it apart, we were pleasantly surprised to see it was made from solid Wester Maple, so it had good bones and was a great buy!

 

Once scraped/sanded and glued back together, we designed and built the display tray out of scrap / left over wood. The top was cut out with a rabbit to inlay the glass, created a new usable drawer with the refurbished handle, applied a couple coats of English Chestnut stain and 3 coats of Satin WipeOn Poly and then lastly sealed the glass in place.

 

Initially, the table didn’t look like much when we picked it up, but it turned out to be quite the nice piece and I'm very proud of what we built together.

 

As always, whenever I refurbish an older piece of furniture I like to keep some of the character marks from it’s previous life to allow it's age to show through.

 

To take a quote from Ben Napier (Home Town) “I like a little bit of dinge”.

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