Holly, my wife, loves the distressed furniture made from reclaimed wood at stores like Anthropologie and Shabby Chic. She has also wanted a sofa table since we moved back into our house. Unfortunately, in the Bay Area (and probably other parts of the country) distressed & reclaimed some how equals 'looks like an antique so charge 4x the price.'
Sadly, we don't have a budget for such finds, but we do have an
awesome reclaimed lumber place in East Palo Alto. $21 later and we were in business. The table top & shelf were a piece of 2" x 15" that we found in the neighbors basement when they demolished their home. I always thought that it would make a great table top and low and behold.
I was going to document the process of building this, but it was pretty easy and I forgot to take pictures of the building. Essentially, route your legs to accept the side members. Cut and route the side members to fit in there (mortise or tenon, but I don't remember which is which). Route the bottom of the legs for the shelf. Glue the back and 2 side members in. Don't forget the shelf. Cut the front up, make your drawers and glue all that together.
Flip the whole assembly upside down and attach the top. I used L-brackets, which I'm proud to say are the only screws on the table. I did this because the top of the table is slightly warped and didn't fit quite snuggly.
Painting it was a pain in the ass. Holly had one color in mind that Home Deathspot couldn't quite match. I like the whale gray that it turned out, but I'll always think about what it could have been.
