No Room For a Coffee Table? Try This Brilliant Hack!

You see what I mean. No room for anything except a sofa and that was the smallest one I found with a chaise. (Hubby was on board for a new sofa if it had a man chaise — aka a place for the man to sit and relax in his wife’s meticulously decorated home.)

Then I thought about a sofa table behind the sofa wedged in between the sofa and the wall would solve all my furniture problems. That is, until I couldn’t find one that fit. So you know what I am going to say next. I made one! Problem solved.

I wanted a really thin and really long table. Just wide enough to sit some thin lamps on and a few treasures. Oh, and a glass or two.

Here’s what you’ll need to make a sofa table:

Take your long pine board, which is going to be the table top, and attach the furring strips to the underside of the table top on either side.

To do this, use your clamps to hold the furring strip to pine board, and drill pilot holes about every foot along the furring strip. (Pilot holes are small holes drilled into the wood before driving the screw in. This prevents the wood from splitting and keeps the screw straight.)

We did a few pilot holes and then screws and moved down the board and repeated. Then moved onto the other side and did the same.

These are the screws we used.
They are construction screws with a star shape at the end. The star shape gives the screw added torque for easy driving. (It’s easier for the screwdriver to grip.)

Now for the legs. I saved some banister rails when we tore down our hand railing in the basement. I knew they would be useful for something one of these days. They ended up being the perfect height for the table. (You can also buy these at a home improvement store or just use 2 x 2 wood cut to your desired height.)

We turned the table right-side up and drilled pilot holes, and then sunk the screws into the wood, which is when you take a larger screw bit and drive down just a tiny bit over the pilot hole. This is to sink the screw head, which means when the screw is driven into the wood, it will sink down beneath the surface of the wood, allowing you room to use wood filler. You don’t want you screws sticking out above the wood; it just doesn’t look nice. (Depending on the size of the screws depends on what size drill bits you will use to make your pilot holes and to sink the screw. They have charts on the world wide web for the size screw you are using if you can’t figure it out.) Put the screws into those holes where the center of the legs would be.

Drill pilot hole.

Use bigger drill bit to allow for screw . . . Sink screw.

Now flip it over, put your leg on (not your leg, the furniture leg), and drive the screw into the leg.

Good; now, for extra support to keep the legs nice and sturdy, drill another pilot hole on the outside of the leg, then use your bigger driver to create the pocket to sink the screw, and drive another screw in. Do that for all four legs.

Your table is now built. Now mine is a little wobbly because it’s so long and thin. I could have added extra support or more legs but I knew this table would be wedged in between the sofa and the wall, which gives it more than enough support.

Time to fill the screw holes with stainable wood filler. I used Elmer’s ProBond Woodfiller. Let it dry and sand it down to perfection. I stained the top of my table using Minwax Wood Finish in Jacobean (just what I had around.) I applied 2 thin coats, letting it dry properly in between each coat. I then painted the legs in Behr Polar Bear Semi-Gloss, which is the color of all of the trim in my house so I had some sitting around. After that dried completely, I put 2 coats of Minwax Polycrylic water based Protective finish in clear satin. Let that dry and harden and you are good to go!!!!!

This is what it looked like all painted and ready to go.

You can see if fits perfectly behind the sofa. The actual depth of the table is only 6″ which is not much but it serves its purpose.

And here she is all dressed up and in action.

This table cost me about $25 to make. Remember, I had the legs and the paint products already sitting around, so I didn’t have to buy them. But even if I did have to buy that stuff, it would have been a fairly inexpensive project considering all the tables I browsed through were ridiculously priced and not well made. I am 100% satisfied with my new little sofa table, suitable for trinkets, treasures, slim lights, and, of course, my morning coffee and night time wine glass!

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