Coffee Table with Storage
Once upon a time we lived in a tiny apartment. It didn’t feel that way at first. It was almost 850 square feet, 2 whole bedrooms. When we moved in we were expecting our first child and were leaving a one bedroom basement apartment, so this was an upgrade. Plus, the kitchen wasn’t carpeted. Another bonus of the move. Anyway jump ahead a few more kids, Mike had decided to do graduate school so we were still there and things were started to feel a bit tight. But we had a yard and killer rent so we stayed put.
With children come toys and after browsing Pinterest for inspiration I found some benches that doubled as filing cabinets. I needed it bigger than a bench and organized differently for toys. That’s as far as I think about these types of things, so I passed it along to Mike. That following Christmas I had the bright idea to do a homemade Christmas (Pinterest, in it’s early years, did irrational things like this to my brain). Time got short (remember he is still doing grad school plus he was eyeball deep in a start up), I told him to prioritize the kids’ gifts.
Now before we go any further let me prepare you for some terrible quality pictures. These projects took place almost 8 years ago. Technology in the picture taking world has come a long way since. Plus we were poor so our phones weren’t particularly nice for even then. So don’t get all judgey on the quality of pictures.
Child #1 received this:
Child #2 received this:
And I got a piece of paper with a sketch on it. Haha.
Anyway the final project was finally finished that following summer and it was wonderful to have a place to tuck away some of the toys.
Here it is living it’s best life as a toy box. All nice and tidy with it’s dress ups and wooden train tracks.
There are a lot of great things about this piece but I’ll settle for the top two that will most likely matter to you.
One, it’s a two-ffer piece of furniture. Coffee table and a toy box (or storage for whatever you need to tuck away like blankets, books, games, whatever). This is small space living 101. The footprint of your furniture matters.
Two, you can divide it however you want. This toy box has held train tracks, dress up clothes, blocks, etc. Nice and orderly, until the children use it, but we haven’t been able to solve that problem yet.
This is a picture was taken before the top was attached and put on a hinge, but shows another way organize the inside of the chest.
This is what it looks like when pretending to be a coffee table in some weird lighting.
Confessions. We never painted this. It was on our to-do list for many years. It was put to use immediately once it was built and then was used so much it was too inconvienent to pull out and finish. So just so you know, that’s an option.
There is also a matching bench that he’d made me a few years earlier. You can find that here. It also was never painted.
Click the button below to go to the portfolio page for this project.
