Expanding our Console Table

It all started with this ah-may-zing console table from CB2.  I highly, highly recommend it (although it now has a different name and a higher price - boo).

It was perfect for the entryway in our previous house.

You may recall that we played with the living room layout for months before finally settling on our current set up.  And that current set up includes pulling the sofa away from the wall to make the seating area more cozy.  Ergo, we needed a console table behind it.  I was envisioning something like this or this.

The problem with our beloved CB2 console was that it was too short.  The sofa is 84" long and the console is only 56" long.  (If I was a good blogger I would have taken a picture for you, but you'll get the idea later.)  For awhile, I thought we were going to have to find another spot for the console table, store it somewhere, or sell it.  But, we really didn't have another spot for it or a good place to store it.  And as I have already professed my undying love for it, you can imagine that selling it was really not settling well with me.  So I came up with a solution.  Why not use the existing table as the base and just add a top to extend it the full length of the sofa?

So that is what I did.

You may have noticed in the photo above that we have some new artwork and new pillows.  More on those in another post.  Back to the console table for now.  I put it together for around $40 (some of the supplies I had on hand and some I had to purchase).  It's the second piece of "furniture" that I've built and it turned out quite a bit better than the first.  (The first was our plant stand and at that point in time we did not have a miter saw or as much DIY know-how.)  

For the top of the console top (confusing yet?), I cut two 1x6 boards to the length of the sofa.  Then I secured square dowel pieces with wood glue and screws so that they held the two boards together and formed the inset area where the current console would fit.

I originally intended to stop here and stain it.  However, I quickly realized that adding some trim would dramatically improve things. So I picked up a few pieces of pine lattice, attached them with wood glue and finishing nails, punched the nails in, filled with wood filler, sanded, and voila.

Much better, right?  On to staining.

Two coats of dark walnut stain followed by two coats of polyurethane followed by me insisting that we not move it or touch it or look at it wrong for 3-5 days.  I was just playing it safe, guys.

Then it was time to move her inside and style her up.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  The cats are happy that I left the sides open.  They like the fact that they can still hide behind the sofa and they enjoy having their own personal "tunnel".  We won't discuss the hairballs that build up back there.

What do you think?  Although it doesn't exactly appear as if it was manufactured as a single piece of furniture, it doesn't look as awkward as I had anticipated.  I'm happy any day with a project that allows us to inexpensively tweak an existing piece of furniture to make it work again.