Behind The Sofa Table

We’ve had our lake house mobile home for about 2 1/2 years. We bought it with some furniture included, but to be honest, we didn’t keep much of the furniture the previous owners left behind because we wanted to transform the lake house to represent our style. One of the few things we kept was the two blue sofas. They were in good condition and super comfy. We also had to replace all the bedrooms with vinyl planks so everything from those three rooms was discarded. The funny thing was that we didn’t even move the sofa a few inches here or there until a few months back. When we finally did move the sofa, we were surprised that the sofa on the interior wall had an a/c vent under it. This year, our a/c unit has really been struggling to keep up with the Texas heat. So recently my husband asked if I could create something that kept the sofa away from the wall and would allow the a/c vent to go unrestricted around the item I created.

I knew a long narrow sofa table would work, but my husband was still concerned that the table would constrict the airflow. I knew I could create a sofa table with ventilation options and I got inspiration from a slat bench that I found on Pinterest. Although the item I created wouldn’t really have a cottage feel like I am fond of in our home, our home really is just meant to be cozy and comfortable. So a/c circulation beats out aesthetics any day!

I decided that I didn’t want to spend a fortune on this table so I looked through my recent Rockler score of sale boards. I bought the first three boards (from left to right) at Rockler and then ripped them into 1 5/8″ strips. The 4th board was a super great find from a friend’s estate sale. By using these 4 boards to make my slat sofa table in a thin design, I calculated that I was all in with$14 worth of oak boards.

I was really hoping to make my slim table design about 72″ in length, but since I was limiting my design to boards that I had on hand, my table was designed off my longest board on 53″. Due to the fact, that I didn’t have 6 ripped planks of 53″, I used 4 smaller boards to splice in the center and just made it seem purposeful and even on the design.

The slat design should allow the a/c vent to really push through the slats and keep our home at a more comfortable temperature.

A few years back, I purchased a kreg jig. I think it’s been my most useful purchase. I just love it!

Hidden pocket holes are great when you are building furniture that you want to assure is stable and beautiful.

When designing the legs, I wanted the entire piece to feel slim-line and cohesive. I used the same size ripped boards to make the legs.

After adding the legs, I felt that the piece just needed one more stabilization aspect. So after rummaging through my scrap wood pile, I found a slim oak piece that I had ripped off an oak board for a project I did several months back.

I would have loved to do the project with two stabilization boards from each leg post to the other. I think the design would have been a cleaner look in my mind, but I didn’t want to purchase any oak boards for this project. I knew that I wouldn’t be lucky enough to find them on sale and my cost for the project would have been another $30 easily.

I have to say, I am always a dork. I try to problem-solve my projects on grid paper. I usually have the basic design (in black at first) and then you can see I have to fine-tune it as I construct it based on measurements changing.