Building a Hallway Table – The Plan

For an almost complete novice at woodworking, specifically furniture making, I have a significant backlog of projects. I’ve started making bedside tables for our guest bedroom, once I finish those I will have to make slightly more sophisticated bedside tables with drawers for our bedroom. Depending on how all those turn out, I might be commissioned to make some bedside tables for my future in-laws. On top of that, there is a hallway in our house that could used a table to spruce it up a bit.

The guest bedroom bedside tables are stuck in limbo because I started that project at a friends house with the plans to use a Festool Domino Joiner. Since, I don’t have access to that tool without them, I’m at their mercy. The hallway table is the project with the next lowest stakes. In order to do this project, I’m going to join a shared woodworking maker space in Richmond called Workbench RVA.

I’ve got three goals for this project:

• Refresh my skills from the woodworking class I took a few months ago
• Try out some new techniques and tools, such as the band saw
• Build a hallway table worthy of sitting in our hallway

Figuring out the wood

Normally, the first step would be figuring out what this project is going to look like and drawing that out. However, I’m taking this project straight out of a book, so I don’t need to do that. Next, I need to figure out the wood I need. The book lists all of the cuts, so I need to work backwards and calculate the lumber I need to buy. Below is the list of cuts listed in the book: