I finished the coffee tables this afternoon. They turned out not half bad. Even though I had a few glitches along the way. Let me tell you about it.
Lift Mechanism Too Big
The first problem I encountered after glueing together the coffee tables was that distance between the 2 lifts that hold the top of the tables up was about 2 inches narrower than the rods that came with the lifts. To solve this problem, I bought some ¾-inch squaring tubing and made rods to fit. After spray-painting the rods black, you couldn’t tell them from the ones that came with the mechanism.
Drawers
I was having problems with the drawers in the end tables. Some of the issues were due to the design of the drawers and some to the MDF that I used. For the coffee tables, I decided to use pine boards and simple butt joints that I glued together with the help of biscuits. These turn out really well with the drawers smoothly travelling in and out.
Table Height
The coffee tables seem to be 2 inches too high. I haven’t decided on making bigger legs for the chairs or sitting on pillows to fix the problem.
Tony Dingwell 