Wood

Melissa wanted dark wood to contrast with the couch. That means, either buy expensive wood or stain cheap wood. I hate stain, so I guess it's expensive wood. I went with walnut, which is beautiful IMHO and it's domestic so it's a little cheaper than most of the exotics (plus, it smells nice when you work with it).

The coffee table legs will come from these two pieces.

The wood for the legs was easy to pick out. The rest was horrible. I love lumber yards and I hate them. I love them because of all the beautiful wood which says "take me home and build something wonderful with me!". I hate them because it's so stressful trying to determine exactly how much wood to buy and which pieces to choose. You have to have a solid plan, you have to look for twisting, cupping, cracks, knots, grain pattern, colors, interesting markings, etc.

After picking through every piece of walnut, I found the best ones and hoped I had just enough. Walnut is not the kind of wood you want to buy too much of ($!). I felt good when one of the guys working there said, "Oh, you found it, I remember that piece when I put it out". It was not easy. Apparently, large clean pieces of walnut are not that easy to come by.

When I began cutting my pieces and making hard and fast decisions about which piece to use where, I realized there was less usable wood than I had planned for. But I was so close!!

After playing around with my plans, I determined if I shortened the depth of the coffee table by 2 inches and shortened six apron pieces by 1/8 inch, I could just make it. Yikes, I hope I don't mess any pieces up. If so, I'll be back at the lumber yard.

Here are my pieces after general ripping and cutting.