Sebastian M
Today I’m going to show you how I made this outdoor chevron coffee table in just one weekend
Let’s get started
My parents do a lot of outdoor entertaining and something maybe Nenita for a while is an outdoor coffee table. So I decided to make them one out of cedar and to get started I took a bunch of two by two and cut them all down to sizes that made up legs long frames short frames and support and as always.
So one little trick I use to help make sure that everything stays square is that before marking out any of my measurements I always cut the end off of every board I use and this helps to make sure that that end of the board is a true 90-degree angle and sometimes since none of my cuts are similar I do make sure to just place them into neat piles and label all of the pieces. But I don’t miss anything later but once all the 2×2 pieces were cut for the frame of this outdoor chevron coffee table. I brought over every single piece except for the legs to my pocket hole jig and began to drill pocket holes at the end of each piece. If you don’t have a pocket hole system in your shop you could assemble a table frame just like this using some decking screws and wood glue. But I chose to use pocket hole joinery because I’m able to
hide all the joinery within the wood and I can still use exterior grade hardware and glue to assemble it so next up after drilling all of the pocket holes.
I then began to assemble the two shorter sides of my Outdoor Chevron Coffee Table frame and I did this just by taking the two legs on one side and attaching them to two shorter frames using those exterior-grade pocket hole screws and also some wood glue I also make sure to keep a speed square handy to make sure that everything that I was assembling stayed nice and square.
I then repeated these steps until I had two small rectangles I could use as the smaller ends of my table base and once both of those sides were square and assembled. I then began to attach them using the longer frame pieces that I cut earlier and I hope that if you guys tackle this build that you are a little more graceful than I am because I’m so uncoordinated and as you can see I did struggle a little bit to just get these things to stand up on their own. But eventually, I figured it out I also make sure to start lining up the middle support pieces as well because once I start drilling the outside supports into the side frames things are getting a little tight in the center so I just wanted everything to be in its rough spot before I started attaching things permanently.
But as you can see I started by first attaching those outside supports to the frame using wood glue and those exterior pocket hole screws and then I place the support six inches apart within the center of those two and those are gonna help with nailing down some of the chevron design pieces later and once one side was complete and beautiful and square I then just moved over to the other side of the table and did the same thing.
It was time to start assembling the bottom side of the base and I did this the same way as the top side but the only difference with the bottom side is that there are no support pieces that are going to be installed it’s just those long frame pieces and they’re installed using the exterior wood glue and those exterior pocket hole screws and just like I did with every other piece in the space I checked and double-checked and triple-checked Foursquare before moving on and once the base was fully assembled.
It was time to bring it outside to add a little bit of flair or like literally add some Flair now I knew that I wanted to use a wood-burning technique on the base of this table so I decided to use the same heat shrink torch and burns Ematic propane tank that I use for my outdoor cedar planters because that’s been holding up well, the wood torching effect not only looks cool but helps to waterproof the piece of furniture as well. This will help it hold up over time to get started I just ran the torch over the surface of the cedar until it turned a nice chocolate brown and I did this for every single nook and cranny of the piece including the bottom as well.
I then used a soft bristle brush to remove all of the char created by the torch and once I was
happy with how smooth the surface was. I then used the torch again to torch the surface of the wood to get a darker color overall I think I repeated these steps about three times to achieve the color that I was looking for.
But you can do this as many times as you want if you’re tackling a build or a technique just like this once the base of the table was complete it was time to
prep for the chevron top.
I started this by finding the center of the top of the base of the outdoor chevron coffee table. Then set my miter saw to a 45-degree miter cut and then started cutting some 1 by 6 cedar boards into angled boards that I could use as test pieces for the chevron.
I’ve done a lot of projects with designs like this in the past such as my geometric wood art piece and sometimes my best advice for this is to just cut a couple of pieces. That is way too long to get an idea of what you want your pattern to look like these pieces can always be trimmed later and it’s not that hard to trim down a piece later. But it is hard to fix a piece after you’ve trimmed it too short.
Basically, after creating a couple of test pieces strictly using 45-degree angles I did some dry fits and ran a couple of different patterns on my outdoor chevron coffee table until I found something that I was happy with. Like I said earlier these are just test fits but once I was pretty happy with whatever design that I landed on I then began to
remove the pieces and start measuring them to trim them to their final size. Usually, I try to keep the miter set at a 45-degree angle and just keep it there but to make this build a little easier I did have to switch the saw back and forth between the two 45 degrees miter is.
But it wasn’t a big deal and everything ends up lining up so you may just want to make sure that your blade is properly square before starting this project.
But once I was happy with how things were fitting I used an exterior grade wood glue and also some stainless steel brad nails to attach the Chevron pieces to the table base I then continued these steps to trim and attach all of the board’s until I was happy
with my design. So because this was an outdoor build one of the things I had to keep in mind was severe wood movement because the wood will be subject to a lot of different weather patterns so I decided to use a spacer in between each one of my rows of pieces and this is going to allow maximum room for what movements that the Outdoor Chevron Coffee Table can survive over time and to help keep all of these spaces consistent. I just really use the size of my speed square as the spacer for each one of the boards and I continually use this throughout the process to make sure that all of the lines were even and that everything lined up nicely once.
The bulk of the pattern was complete it was time to fill in those small little sections. So I decided to cut out some triangles from the leftover cedar boards that I have and the little trick that I have here is to flip the 45-degree angle to the opposite side and then cut into the pointy edge of the opposite angle and you have a perfect triangle. Another little trick that I use on pieces that need to be trimmed that may be a little too dangerous to put your finger near the blade is that I take a long piece of wood and I clamp it down to whatever piece that I’m looking to cut and that applies pressure to the piece and keeps it in place so that when I’m making atrium like the one. I did for this triangle my fingers are nowhere near the blade once I was done cutting that triangle to size I attached it to the tabletop using that wood glue and this stainless steel brad nail trick and it worked out beautifully.
At this point, I decided I didn’t want to leave well enough alone and didn’t like the way that the edges look so I used some leftover 1×6 boards and cut them down into three-quarter-inch strips to use as a border. I then brought them over to my miter saw made 45-degree cuts just like I did with the Chevron pieces and began to attach them to the borders of the Outdoor Chevron Coffee Table using wood glue and brad nails. And once all the tabletop pieces were installed it was time to sand everything down and I did a mixture of hands handing as well as power sanding. Then decided to go the extra mile and seal the entire table using a waterproof spray and once that dried it was time to install it in its new home.
I’m not only excited about the way that this outdoor chevron coffee table looks but the fact that it took me only a weekend to build is even cooler because of my crazy full-time schedule with my job it is kind of hard to be able to create cool things in a small amount of time so I was really happy that I was able to create this trendy cool-looking outdoor chevron coffee table in just a couple of days. The other thing that I love about this project is that I know how well the wood-burning technique has held up on my other cedar projects that are outdoors and I hope that this outdoor chevron coffee table will see a lot of action and many future family events in my parent’s backyard. I hope you guys love this project as much as I do and as much as my family does and if you want to see some more woodworking builds in the future.
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