Industrial cart coffee table

A way too short industrial cart coffee table raising to new heights and get a little farmhouse styling too!

This addressed a problem in our living room with a coffee table at the wrong height.

I love my coffee table.

This is what the living room looked like before the weekend.  We bought the coffee table for under $200 on the central coast of California about 14 years ago.  It was brown when we bought it and the top a parquet type veneer.  Which with enough layers of paint you can hide the dated veneer!

Over the years I have painted it black, white, red, brown, creamy white and repainted it black, white, red, well you know.  I finally repainted to this final color which is a slate gray color.  Needless to say the parquet lines has long been covered over!

I love the over~sized onlays and the ornate legs.

The problem is the size and height in our living room and with out other furniture.  The coffee table is 42 inches square.  That’s a large square for the area.  The height is 19 1/2 inches.  That’s perfect for most coffee tables but we have two large ottomans plus the shaggy ottoman also in the room at about the same height.  Makes our living room a sea of surfaces, if you know what I mean.

In comes a faux industrial cart coffee table we found at Gordman’s during our trip to Denver.  It had issues.  The top was cracked and it’s only 16 inches high.

But I could fix that!  Plus they marked it down to $100!

So here it sits on the work table with the metal parts removed:)

Tip:  when removing parts replace the screws and loosely add the bolts.  Keeps from losing parts.

This wood will be used for something else.

I grab some leftover 1 by 4 lumber, cut it to size, and sanded the edges roughly to give an old worn look.

Next I glued, screwed, and clamped my boards together.  I used three pieces of 1 by 4 lumber to get a clapboard look to the sides and the additional height I wanted for the coffee table.

Next I glued and nailed the clapboard pieces together to form a box.

At this point I feel like I’m making a coffin, eak!

I reused the wood for the top and just because Idothingslikethis, I added a piece of an old baby crib where the top was cracked.

The coffin, ahem coffee table got a good bit of aging using black and dark brown glaze.  Black in the deepest crevices and brown in the rough spots.  Plus a light covering all over.

I did like the color of our old coffee table.  Our living room is dark and although we live in a cabin I’m working on lighting things up a bit.

That’s why I have a category dedicated to blog cabin white.

A light sanding to uncover the yummy “ageness”  and a rub of wax.  Add the metal bits back on and…

Voila!  An industrial cart coffee table that is 21 1/2 inches high and doesn’t take up most of the living room.

That makes me happy.  Plus the ruggedness fits the cabin better.

The details up close.

Oh, and this is how I got it into the living room.  Little Bella pulling the cart:)

Not really, promise no puppies were harmed during the building or setting up of this industrial cart coffee table.

It was a photo op I couldn’t pass up!

 

Oh and about the old coffee table that I love, well I took it apart and the pieces will be showing up in other areas around the cabin.

Linking up to Throwback Thursday