DIY Modern Outdoor Sofa | The Falcon Wing Sofa

oh hey guys today we're gonna be making a sofa to replace this thing which is about two years old I made it in my second video I think and it's out of pine with finish that's peeling the design is the design is not super great things are falling apart it's rotting bees have eaten it lots of different stuff it's also a little bit clunky so I wanted to make something new so we're gonna check something else out today we're making this cedar slash sofa which looks just as good with the cushions off as it does put them on it's also easier to make uses less material is just as sturdy and in my opinion looks nicer as you can see in the drawings this design relies on these upside-down falconwing looking supports to hold up the seat slots the seat and back are at a 90 degree angle but angled slightly to keep the cushions and lettin water flow off I'm gonna mill 8 cedar pickets and 7 two by fours that I got from my home improvement store we shouldn't need all these but it's always good to have some extra on hand just in case I started by planing both sides of all the boards for the pickets I doubled them up since it's a little bit difficult to plane that fan on my planer then I used my table saw to clean up the other two sides of the boards I must have done a really good job at picking out the straight boards because I only had to trim one side of the pickets I'm using my miter saw to cut most of these boards to length and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the table saw is an exact match to the height of my miter saw can I appreciate these little things I cut a mix of pieces from each board to reduce waste I'm going to include the cut list in the description as well as some plans and a Sketchup file in case you want to build this on your own if you do send me some pictures on Instagram because I really like to see when people make the same or similar projects from my plans it's always really satisfying the sofa is made up of only five different lengths of two-by-fours I kept the pieces for the Falcon wing back supports long so that I had some extra flexibility you'll see why this will be helpful in a second [Music] all right with everything cut I started to assemble it legs I'm using pocket hole screws throughout this build along with a couple of other stainless steel screws glue and some Brad nails I designed everything so that you will not be able to see any of the pocket holes or most of the screws once the self is actually put together for this build I used the bigger Craig pocket hole jig you're seeing here but I also used a smaller one that's really cheap I'll link to both of these tools as well as anything else I used in this video in the description in case you're interested in checking it out even if that all show in the video every time I used a ton of outdoor rated wood glue to reinforce all the joints it's pretty easy to clean up during sanding so I wasn't too careful about getting glue everywhere when screwing in some of the pocket holes I used this 90 degree clamp which works really well but you can also just use your hand or use another surface like the table saw fence to keep things in place and that works great too I know some people are gonna hate on the pocket holes I'm using but I found them to be really great for projects like this they let me complete this pearl o any way you let me complete this project in about 8 hours including filming and you can't see them once it's assembled sure I could do some fancy joinery and whatnot but this project meant to be for DIY errs and it's nice to be able to do things fast with a joint that works really well so I have no regrets with those complete I moved on to the Falcon wings and this is where things got a little bit trickier in my initial plans I had the bottom pieces of the seat being longer but that would mean that you would see the pocket holes from the back so I switched that and had that back extend farther down luckily I had left these pieces extra long so it wasn't difficult and I didn't have to recut anything so I joined the back and seat with pocket holes [Music] then I laid it out on a leg piece to see which angle would look best I wanted the seed to sit about 13 inches off the ground and it needed to be about 23.5 inches deep for the cushions so based on this I ended up with this layout which required me to cut down some of the back pieces still not exactly sure why this was different than what my drawing showed but it turned out okay in the end with the board in the exact place I wanted I traced out everything that was going to need to be cut [Music] then I clamped it down and used a circular saw to freehand the cuts this isn't that hard as long as you go slow also none of these cuts are gonna be joining against anything so they don't need to be perfect and you will have the opportunity to sand them nice and flush with that done I confirmed again where the ends needed to be cut I'm only going to be cutting this seat and at this point so that I can again measure the seat back once the horizontal supports are in for the sofa this is going to help me ensure a really tight fit with this part of the project I can't overstate how helpful it is to go back to the actual build and measure against that and double and triple-check because I definitely would have made at least one mistake and had to go back and rebuild parts of it which would have taken way more time than just measuring twice before installing the horizontal pieces I took the opportunity to sand everything really well and you're seeing me use this off cut from the seat since I had the exact right angle I was able to use it to trace this angle onto the leg pieces and also the horizontal support this is gonna really keep the seat slats flush on the seat and I set the table saw blade and ripped it down [Music] I cut pocket holes did one last dry fit and then installed the first horizontal support I been cut down the back piece at the same angle so it would sit flush with the back of the seat and I install pocket holes and glued it in with that done I could measure and cut down the back support just perfectly and once I knew it fit I traced that and cut down the other three because of some of the changes to the back of the build I realized that the horizontal support was going to need some extra support so I decided to install the offcut from that same support perpendicularly to the support and add some extra strength this meant I needed to cut out slots for the Falcon wings so I traced these and I used a pulse all to cut the first one prior to installing the second back stretcher I then installed the stretcher with glue pocket holes and some screws once I confirm the first falconwing fit I measured the rest of them out and cut them with a pool so now I don't have a lot of experience and cutting joinery like this so it was definitely a learning experience the nice thing is though you only really will see one part of the cut so as long as you get that part right you should be good as you can see here I'm going from yeah - Matt - okay - decent so not bad after four cuts with that done I measured out where at one of them spaced and installed them with glue pocket holes and stainless steel screws for the side pieces this is a really fun part of this build seeing these things go in they really add a nice bit of drama with their angles and repetition across the back okay on to the seat and back slots I'm gonna have to stagger these as you can see here because the boards themselves are a couple inches too short to span the whole width of the sofa I measured these out ensuring that they would end up on a seat support that I could nail the end into and I cut them down with a circular saw it's definitely a good idea to make sure you sneak up on these cuts so you get a really nice fit after cutting them all down I installed them with glue and Brad nails this would have also looked great with just glue but I really didn't feel like clamping all this down and letting it dry if you want to see how that would look or how it would look with screws you can check out some of my other videos I'll link above I space the slats out using a spare off cut and worked from the front back and then the top down this way there is some extra area at the bottom back where water and snow could run off all right so we're almost done with the base a little bit of problem here though as you can hopefully see there's a tiny bit too much play right here which it's not gonna break but it's just a little bit awkward so I'm going to if I did this again next time I'd probably add two more of these and just equally spread them out or even just add three more and go one about every foot that way we definitely have enough enough strength to support these however I'm not gonna do that now so instead here's what I'm thinking I've been a bunch of these leftover two-by-fours ripped in half so I'm gonna use these and then run them here along each one of these and drill and drill them into the studs here and that way we should have plenty of strength I'm not gonna do it on the back I don't think since I'd have to show the screws and I honestly don't think that they're they're gonna be needed for the back since you're not really pretty much pressure on there so as you can see this fix took about two extra two by fours ripped in half I use pocket holes and glue to attach them this worked really well and everything was rock-solid once it dried as I mentioned though you could definitely add a couple more Falcon wings and that would add plenty of strength I have no doubt but this was really easy [Music] [Music] finally I sanded everything down to 150 grit flushing up all the joints and getting rid of any glue also he made little bevel on all the edges then I install it some plastic feet to keep it up standing water and that was it alright so I'm really happy with how this turned out it's much cleaner from a design perspective and also build perspective and the original one it's made out of cedar so it's gonna last a really long time it's gonna actually patina really well and then I'm gonna put some teak oil in about a year that'll look kind of like this anyway let me know what you think give me a thumbs up if you like the video subscribe for more stuff I have about six or seven projects in the works about half of those are finishing up now so I'm gonna have some good stuff coming soon but until then stay safe and I'll see the next episode

Channel: Nathan Builds

Views: 650,609

Rating: 4.9040484 out of 5

Keywords: seating, couch, woodworking, project, furniture, sofa, plans, outdoor, lounge, build, wood, 2x4, easy, cedar, do it yourself, outdoor furniture, diy outdoor sofa, modern outdoor sofa, limited tools, diy outdoor couch, diy outdoor seating, diy outdoor furniture, how to make an outdoor sofa, how to make a modern sofa, modern sofa design, one day project, beginner diy, free plans, outdoor cushions, diy furniture, diy modern sofa, diy modern couch, modern sofa, modern couch, DIY woodworking

Id: JvzaApS7a_8

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020