Two years ago, in 2013, my brother texted me a pictures of new table he had seen at Lance Armstrong's Mellow Johnny's bike shop in Austin, Texas. This one had a deeper display case than the one at the NOLA Insectarium; and like that a one it was build as a display box with legs. The table is shown below.
Mellow Johnny's display table
Using the experience from the first table and the new pictures I came up with the Sketchup design below. The table is 20 inches high, 52 inches in length and 24 inches deep. The display case is 8 inches deep with skinny tampered legs.
I picked a duo tone for finishing the table. The legs and sides are stained in a mixture of oil based black paint and thinner while the top is stained in a cherry red. I picked a beveled 1/4 inch glass for the top to give it a sharper look. The finished display table, shown below, is used to display part of my espresso demitasse collection.
Finished Sofa Display End Table.
The demitasse collection is actually a collection of stories as to how each one came to my possession. More on this on a future blog post.
On August 2009 my family and I visited New Orleans, LA. We wanted to see the reconstructed city since the work done post the 2005, Katrina, hurricane. At NOLA we met with my brother who traveled from Texas. On August 6th, we all visited the Audubon Insectarium. It has an amazing displays of insects.
One of the curiosities of the Insectarium is the Bug Buffet which invites the visitor to try adventurous bug recipes. Here we consumed tasty crickets chip cookies and other healthy foods. While at the Bug Buffet we sat at an interesting insect display table, shown in the picture above. In hte center of the table there is clear case with live insects... all while you are consuming the dead relatives. My brother, Andi Garcia, and I got the idea of building a similar table. The post to follow will document the developed products.
A year later, in September 2010, I used the insectarium table ( see previous post) as inspiration to design a display/sofa table for home. I had done a table for the kids a couple years before and I knew I wanted to make it modular. I designed the table using Google Sketchup, a program I had used before to design other furniture. Adapting the design proved to be pretty easy. Where the original table was a box with legs and a glass top; I chose to make this one as a table with an inner shelve and a glass top. The difference being the legs support the weight of the top. See the Sketchup model in the pictures below.
Sketch of display end table as rendered by Google Sketchup.
Exploded view of the display end table showing dimensions.
Photo realistic rendering using Google Sketchup.
The model was finished in less than one hour with various iteration for the desired details like the second shelve and the tapered legs. When I created the model I made sure to use measurements for readily available dimensional oak lumber. Care was taken to make a Sketchup component out of every needed piece of wood.
The build
I like the look and durability of oak furniture. This was not going to be an exception. To make the legs I glued 3 pieces of 1x3x28 oak dimensional lumber. The picture below show the detail of the finished legs.
The table legs.
Finished frame
The legs are held to the frame via a diagonal combination screw bolt. The screw end attaches to the leg and the bolt end to the table frame. Notice the notch on the table side panels; the display shelve floats on these.
Details of the frame and leg joint.
Using the modular table design made it very easy to put the display table together. This can be seen in the video below.
