My Very Shiny Homemade Iron Pipe Media Table

I know there are a lot of words in this post title, but I couldn’t leave any of them out. They’re all important.

A while back, I began my search for media tables. I have this idea that I’m going to eventually purchase a nice Yamaha audio visual receiver, some speakers and a small television for this new room I recently remodeled. Thinking ahead, as I always do, I knew I’d also need a table to put some of these items on.

After looking around for a while, I deduced that 95% of furniture sold in this world is garbage. Amazon offered some truly awful pieces, as did many other websites. The best tables I found were sold by Crutchfield and Pottery Barn. The only issues with those sellers is that their prices are premium. While I’m happy with Pottery Barn because I’ve received pieces of furniture from them before and know they’re worth the money, I was somewhat skeptical of Crutchfield. Some of their items looked like they could be crafted by yours truly.

Anyway, after purchasing a few sheets of plywood and lumber for another project, I found that I had enough leftover for both a media table and the puzzle table I alluded to in my previous post. This was a good thing because I’ve been in the building mood lately.

My specs weren’t very demanding. I wanted something that was two foot deep by four foot wide. Also, it had to be between eighteen and twenty inches high. Sort of like a coffee table. All I wanted was a simple platform for placing a few items on.

As it turns out, it’s not very difficult to build a homemade media table. It just takes some cutting with a circular saw or a table saw (if you’re truly spoiled), some sanding, some staining and some sealing.

Here’s what I did. After cutting the 3/4 inch of AC pine plywood, I sanded it thoroughly with 150 grit sandpaper. I cleaned it and stained it with Minwax Dark Walnut stain. Then, after it dried, I gave it one coat of semi-gloss polyurethane. I let that dry for about two hours and gave it another coat. I let that second coat dry overnight. The next morning, I gave the entire piece of wood a once over with 200 grit sandpaper to remove as many air bubbles and dust particles as possible and finished it with a third coat of poly. I think it looks pretty good, considering I made this thing in the attic above the garage.

For support, I used regular pine 2x4s. Nothing special there. I cut them so they fit as a frame under the plywood. Like the top, I sanded this wood, stained it and sealed it. I screwed it to the plywood and ended up with a very rigid table.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to make the legs out of. I the past, I’ve used 4x4s and have had varying luck. Since I’m on the iron pipe train lately, I decided to have four 18 inch pieces of 3/4 inch iron pipe cut and threaded at our local hardware store. I also picked up eight flanges. All that needed to be done was to screw them to the bottom of the table top and the project was finished. Extraordinarily simple with no extra fluff.

What’s really neat is that, if I wanted to, I could screw this table to the wall or the ceiling. With these iron flanges, anything is possible. That was a joke.