After we completed the basement on the weekend I was cleaning up some scrap and came across the cut offs from our pine boards that we faced the column with. I have been looking for a tall enough coffee table to transform into a kids play table but hadn’t found what I was looking for. When I saw these chunks sitting around the light went off that I could just make the table. We built a harvest table for Aaron’s sister a little while ago so I had the general idea of how we constructed it, I would just need to scale everything down. So that night I found a 2×4 and marked up my wood for Aaron to make my cuts. I probably could have handled the chop saw but the 2×4 needed to be ripped lengthwise and I didn’t feel comfortable doing that on the table saw. He did all my cuts for me in a half hour or so. The next morning I sanded all my pieces and started assembling. I didn’t use any fancy joinery techniques like when we built the full scale table, just predrilled holes and countersunk screws then put putty in the holes. I knew I was painting the base so all that would be covered up. After I assembled the base I screwed the top onto it from the underside. Then I gave a final sanding to everything and painted the base. Then I stained the top with minwax dark walnut. Once that was dry I used a satin poly to seal it all. I did three coats. What a fun little project this was! It’s “rustic” so it didn’t have to be perfect, it only took a few hours of actual work time and the best part, it was free!