My 12 year old daughter wanted a raised bed that would also be a platform she could walk on. She saw something like that on a TV show and naturally assumed I could build it. I quickly realized that what she wanted would probably require a 500 square foot bedroom. So I decided to lump together a bed, a desk and some shelves to create a large flat surface that would resemble a platform. It’s a bed, it’s a desk, a besk, a ded, a badass bedesk.
I was looking for a sturdy coffee table with simple, modern lines. Something with solid wood and a steel frame. I used to have a coffee table with a shelf underneath. That was extremely convenient to store all the stuff that would otherwise lay on the table itself so I wanted a table with a shelf. I went to the usual places, IKEA, CB2, Crate and Barrel, Room and Board, Pier 1, Ethan Allen and a few other local stores but sure enough I couldn’t find the right coffee table (at a reasonable price too). Since nobody ever built what I needed, I had an excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway, build my own coffee table.
This project started with some left over timber from past projects. I had some rough cut posts and beams, bolts, nuts and galvanized steel panels left from the patio cover and some dimensional timber from the stairs. It was supposed to be a quick project but I made the terrible “mistake” to go to a local non profit that salvages building materials, The Loading Dock. I was looking for some old window sashes but I ended up with 3 beautiful Anderson wood windows with PVC clad. At $20 a piece, it was a deal. I took the windows home and it dawned on me that I couldn’t use these beautiful windows on a shack, I had to build something nice.