Today I am sharing one of my first ever DIY projects! With my blog being 5 years old I have a ton of older content that gets lost in the archives. I have also learned a lot in terms of decorating and taking pictures. So I will be giving life to older projects and am starting with this Easy to make DIY live edge table!
This DIY live edge table was my first new build furniture item ever! I even went with the “live edge” without knowing what it was called. Five years ago was a different time in decor; rustic meant log cabins and the shiplap craze had not hit yet. Going along that theme anything live edge was not called that.
This live edge console table has been the star of the show in my living room! I get questions on it here all the time and people visiting my home always notice this beauty. How can you not?!
I am not sure what type of wood it is. There is a lot of knots, and other lovely distressed features. I know it seems a little crazy. I mean on the scale of 1-10 on rustic this is about a 12. But I saw the potential and was so excited we found the first piece needed for this easy to make DIY live edge table a reality. Truth be told I had initially planned to sand and cut off a lot of the rougher edges pieces, removing most of the beautiful and unfinished look. Luckily I changed my mind about halfway through making this table! The board itself is just shy of 7 feet. I was planning on cutting a few feet off. The width is a little over 1 foot, and 1 inch thick.
Next we purchased a ton of galvanized pipes. Since this was my first ever furniture build I needed to keep things simple. Honestly, this table anyone can make! I wrote down the main detailing I wanted to the table. A rough plan was put into place. Where I wanted the pipes to be. We measured roughly the length and height I wanted and went to work piecing it all together in the store. I wanted to make sure it all fit properly. I mean we did not build the whole table in the store but did set the pieces out in a mock version of the table on the floor. I did not want to get home and realize that there was a large portion of the table missing.
Galvanized pipe leg supplies list –
Four, 24 inch long pipes
Four, 2 inch pipes
One, 48 inch long pipe for the center
Four, caps for the feet of the table
Six, T shaped pipes to use in connecting all of the pipes together
Four, base flat round ones
Four, 10 inch pipes
ALL are 1/2 inch diameter piping
I wanted these to all be black, they were black-ish. Some portions of the pipes appeared more silver and all were smudged up with grime. So I purchased some trusty Rust Oleum black spray paint. I had to sand down the pipes a little before spray painting. There was these annoyingly little adhesive stickers on each of the pipes. Once off they left a sticky mess on the pipe. I know that this is the case with most DIY things, but I HATE SANDING! I think it has to do with the fact that I see no results, just all of the steps I have not gotten to take yet in my plan to finish the project. Just sanding.
Not sanded
The bane of my existence, sand paper
All roughed up and ready for some real progress, paint!
Spray painting is another great simple way to redo furniture! These galvanized pipes took the paint perfectly. I did one coat, turned them over and painted that side. Once there was one full coat all around I sprayed it again just to make sure there was no missing spots.
Do not EVER spray paint on something you plan to reuse, other then to spray paint some more. This is the mess that was left on our paper. From one DIYer to another, beware!
Next staining. I had one other experience with staining, and it failed. See it here, I wanted to redo some cane chairs. I redid them, and the results was lovely, after I accepted defeat with staining them. But this time I was positive I could figure this out. (Since then I have done many wood staining projects, but everyone has to start somewhere!) We have raised and kept alive three children, we DIY all the time. I can conquer some staining of wood. I first sanded (ugh) the wood, this way the wood was porous enough for the stain to take to the wood. I sanded both sides, and the plan was to try out the stains on the underside before committing to one for the top of the console table.
I purchased two very different wood stain colors, at the time I was still new to decorating and not sure the direction I wanted my home and decor to go in The stains were, Varathane – sun beached and Varathane – Kona. I also had on hand the stain I purchased for the cane chairs, which was Caboot solid color acrylic stain. We also found in the garage a minwax, English chestnut. I think my in laws left it over when we bought our house from them. I am not sure what they used it on because to my knowledge and my mother-in-laws as well they never stained anything. So this mystery stain from who knows where was also put into the mix.
The mystery stain finish, English Chestnut
The failed Cane chair stain finish
The newly purchased stain finish, Kona
The other newly purchased stain, Sun bleached
I liked the sun bleached one before I even put it on the wood. I was 99% sure this would be my color when I saw the stain options at first. But the second I placed it on the wood I hated it, it was so whitewashed. I know that was the look, but with this wood it did not come off well at all. Dale loved the Kona, it was dark and wonderful but it almost matched the pipes with it’s dark color. I want there to be some more obvious variation between the two. We finally settled on the mystery, dropped from the decorating gods I am sure, English Chestnut. We don’t know where it came from but it was meant to be.
This was how the wood appeared after all of the sanding was done.
Time to stain this Easy to make DIY live edge table wood. With the wood being so old I did not have to be too careful on amounts applied to the surface. It took any and all stain. I have heard with others you do have to be aware of keeping a somewhat standard amount throughout the piece. I just laid it on thick. I did most of it but of course had Dale do a few spots for picture taking purposes.
Staining wood is really easy, start to move the GLOVED hand from side to side going with the grain. Using the cloth to spread the stain in. I rung the towel out over the can before applying the stain to the wood this way there was not any drip or splotch marks. I wanted this to look natural, I am not sure if splotches exist in nature but I am thinking No.
With this being such an old and worn board there was many times I had to go back and run the towel with some stain over the surface again. It almost disappeared into the wood as we were staining it. Also if there was a particularly moist spot I took the towel with no added stain to it to spread out the moist area, thinning out the stain.
Make sure to get in all of the creases and crevices. We were not committed to one coat or two. I figured with this being my first time staining I would play it all by ear and go where the wind took me. The wind took us to only needing one coat. I liked seeing the grain, the distressed look of it. There is no amount of coat or polishing that can make this look anything other than rustic and industrial so I embraced it.
it appears very red in this picture. It is not so red. The camera added the redish-ness instead of 10 pounds
I was jumping excitedly because we were thisclose to having the Easy to make DIY live edge table done! I could just imagine what I was going to display on it, desperately wanting to get to the fun decorating side of the new table. However, I had a plethora of galvanized pipes to assemble. This is the worlds weirdest puzzle, I think playing Tetris as a child prepared me for this. Shout to to other millennial adults using their skills in the real world. While assembling the table legs I did a lot of scratching my head trying to remember what I had planned to go where with the pipes.
You take each pipe and literally screw it into each other. They have tracks so it was fairly simple and easy, but I had one problem; I set it all up, on the lawn like normal people. “Hello lovely neighbors walking your dog. Just us, our dog Teddy and three kids running around while we build a easy to make DIY live edge table. Normal stuff here in suburbia, right?” Anyways, it was pretty, galvanized, rustic and industrial chic, but it was tall enough to be a bar. We don’t have a bar, I don’t drink and Dale is the kind of drinker that relaxes on the couch with his feet up and a beer in hand. Not a sit at the bar and discuss… whatever people discuss at bars. So this was a problem. The initial table sat 39 inches tall. It came up well past my stomach.
“Ohhh….
“Ahhhhh…..
“Eeeeeee…..
“Woah, that table is towering over the 3 year old!” *Pause to enjoy my tiny little one Gavin in this picture. He is now 8 and has clearly been DIYing since being a toddler.*
So guess what we got to do? A random not planned run to our local home improvement store to purchase shorter pipes. I decided to shorten the top 4 pipes that come up from the break in the pipes with the one going across the center. I purchased four, 5 inch long pipes, cut that baby in half. Well not the table, then it would be a coffee table. The other pipes, the top ones are now in half. Queue the begrudging sanding and painting again for these four unplanned additions. But it wa The table was way too tall. It would not have worked as a console table in our living room. It would be like one of your darling kids. The live edge table now rests at a modest more console-table-like height of 34 inches.
Once that was all remedied it was time to make this old piece of wood, and these galvanized pipes turn into by dream live edged console table.
Initially I had planned to cut the wood down to size, probably 1 foot off on each side. However, once I carried it inside to see how the whole thing would look I loved that it took up almost the entire wall. It is a big wall with a gallery wall of family, some DIY wainscoting and is where we enter our home. It will never be a functional space because it is the main way to get in our house, this wall space needs to stay clutter free. This long and skinny console table that is 7ft long is perfect!
Once that was decided to leave the wood as-is it was time to make the table happen. Using some short screws and a automatic drill I went to work putting it all together. I careful drilling in because it is such thin wood I did not want the screws to come through to the top. So, drilling in slowly to see where it ends up was very important.
I also added some nice floor protectors to this, we have this on most of the pieces of furniture. They are super easy to put on and for the most part stay stuck. It allows our beautiful distressed floors stay that way without getting scratches on them.
As each screw was going in I was getting more and more giddy. I could see the light at the end of the Easy to make DIY live edge table tunnel. Not that this was a particularly grueling project, not at all. To be honest I always like the results more then the process. These results are more then I was hoping for! Now the TADA! With a gazillion pictures….
This Easy to make DIY live edge table is a beauty!
Using galvanized pipes as the table legs kept this DIY furniture build sooooo easy to do! The steps were as as easy as sanding, spray painting and screwing in. Also, learn from my mistake and confirm the height beforehand. Other than that it was quick and painless to create.
The details in this live edge table are stunning! When I created it a few years ago anything being labeled “live edge” was not even a thing. I just gravitated to the un-finished and rustic look of this. Dale loves rustic decor and I love light and bright decor. I have balanced out the two happily. This table is the perfect example of that, paired next to the white wainscoting the rustic and dark feel to this warms up the space nicely.
The wood also feels like it is driftwood that you could find at the beach, which goes along perfectly with my coastal decorating style! Even though this particular wood was found in a barn sale in Wisconsin. But hey, it works!
I am happy to report that this crack in the wood has not gotten any bigger or been a problem at all. Initially when I made this DIY live edge table I worried it was a ticking time bomb to split completely. The one benefit that has helped this is that the table does not get a lot of action other than setting keys and purse/wallet on it. Unlike a lot of our other furniture that gets climbed on, sat on and abused this is more or less untouched.
This wall is also pretty much an unsuable space as well. It is the wall directly in front of our front door and is the main entrance to our home. I would never put the sofa on this wall or the TV because of the closeness to the front door. Which makes this wall and part of the living room useless in spite of it’s massive size. This DIY live edge console table is the perfect addition to the space. It let’s me show off some decorations, have table lamps and compliments my gallery wall of pictures. There is a lot of design features here for such a useless space as far as functionality.
A table similar to this in size and style purchased would be very expensive. The total cost for this was around $80! You cannot beat that price! This is how I am able to decorate most of my home. I keep a healthy balance of thrift store finds, DIY decor/furniture, upcycles and then splurging on things I cannot make.
As you can see this is a pretty narrow console table, which works really well for a high traffic area in a home.
It all blend in so well with the rest of my living room decor! The dark wood color was definitely needed to off set all of my white and lighter colors I have in my home.
Since I like to keep it as realistic and honest as possible around here I would prefer the wood itself to be a little more thick. It is a little on the small side, but with this being wood I found at a farm I had to take what I could get. Ideally it would be just a little chunkier of a piece. However it has never bothered me enough, this has remained one of my favorite furniture pieces in our home!
This DIY live edge table is also a major conversation piece, along with the gallery wall of family pictures. Which is surprising considering I got such weird looks when I shared what the rough wood was going to be used for. I also worried our gallery wall had too many pictures on it, like too much of a good thing. This just goes to show to always go with your gut with decorating your home!
My instinct was to fill this wall with pictures completely and I was right. My instinct when I saw the rough wood at the farm was that is would make a great narrow console table, and I was right! Each home has it’s own personality, just like the people in it. I want my home to let that style and personality shine. I do have disappointed friends who want a table like this one and when they find out I made it they are not so happy. The DIY life is not for everyone, there are however a lot of similar tabled that you can find online and in furniture stores. Just be prepared to pay a lot more than $80!
In the beginning of this post I explained that I made this DIY live edge table a few years ago, it was my first DIY furniture project ever! Since then I have made a dinner table, coffee table, built in bunk beds, upcycled a ton of other furniture pieces and you know… built a bunch of cabinets for our kitchen. But this little console table started it all! I will be linking some of the other furniture projects I have done at the bottom of this post.
It is rare for a new build furniture project to be so easy to make, but this table is exactly that! I got pretty wordy with this tutorial but the basics for this are find a piece of wood, stain it, purchase galvanized pipes, spray paint and assemble. It is like the DIY version of an IKEA table! Let me know if you have any questions about this Easy to make DIY live edge table and I am happy to answer them! I will be making another one pretty similar soon to add to our family room in the basement.
Some of my other furniture projects –
How to make a dining room table – the modern take on the classic style
I can’t wait to get into our new house so I can do all of the DIYs!! This is a fantastic way to decorate your entryway. I love live edge tables.
Thank you so much! Congrats on the new house, it is so fun to decorate a new space!
This is a gorgeous table! I love how you put all the steps here to do it! I would love to try and make one!!!
Thank you! The steps are really easy to make this table!
I like this because it isn’t super bulky like a lot of furniture. Our house is small and this would fit nicely against a wall.
omg i love it! it has such a rustic feel