Turning a Free Chair into a $2,000 Table

a few weeks ago I got a message from my buddy Andrew runs a power washing business so he's very into restoring old stuff and he said that he had this old Shea Lounge Shay's Lounge shape Shea Long so the original phrase was Shez long but the spelling and the pronunciation have been modified to be more pronunciable I suppose in English to become Lounge so Andrew had this old Chez Lounge that was breaking down super dirty it was kind of past its useful life but he had seen my Trash to Treasure videos so we wanted to give it to me so I could transform it into something else sodium hydroxide here I think it's otherwise known as lye and we're going to apply this to the shades it's going to work on all the organic buildup and all the gray fibers so if you were to try we let this dry yeah try and stain it hydroxide we put on is going to want to break down the stain you're just trying to apply right so we want to get the wood back to neutral so by using an acid we're going to neutralize everything that's still in the wood itself and we've also darkened the wood by putting on the hydroxide as well so this is going to brighten it up and uh we'll make it even more presentable uh so the power washing took about an hour I'm keeping track of all the time I spent on this project so at the end when we sell the finished piece I can calculate how much I made per hour and now it's ready to take apart let's do it so since this thing is already kind of falling apart it should be pretty easy to take apart whoops [Music] oh boy this thing is in a rough shape thank you [Music] [Applause] all right so this wood is in pretty rough shape to the point where I think I just need to get rid of most of the structure that this guy cannot do anything with that but I think can salvage the slats let's play these bad boys [Music] so I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but Andrew said that all of this wood is Teak and I think he's right this is so beautiful check that out Next Step trim the edges let's do it [Music] foreign [Music] so I had this idea for a piece of furniture that involves cutting every single one of these into triangles once we do this there's no going back but I think it's going to be worth it let's do it [Music] foreign [Music] let's see how much space these take up oh these look nice that's a pretty nice nice coffee table yeah awesome so I can use this piece of three quarter inch plywood as a backer board I designed this super simple 3D printed jig to evenly space the triangles across the backer board this only took around 15 minutes to design but I think this is gonna be absolutely key to building this table so I'll start in the center of the board so the triangles fit perfectly in there and I made sure to add enough space so that they don't get stuck put on a few dots of super glue and a DOT of wood glue spray some activator on the plywood and then we press that into place [Music] now we can take this off shift it over and continue the tessellation let's do it [Music] so I'd almost exactly enough triangles to make this hexagon these pieces here like 20-ish triangles is all I had left next step I want to trim off the excess plywood but I also want to even up the edges even though we use that 3D printed jig we have a little bit of cumulated air around the edges but by using my track saw I can make each Edge perfectly straight let's do it foreign there we go so I want to feel the space between all of the triangles with resin as well as make a resin border around the entire hexagon and that means we need to make a mold let's do it [Music] so I was just about to seal the mold with silicone and I was pumping and pumping in my caulking gun and nothing was coming out the tip and I realized that the back exploded look at this delicious just punched right through the back now I got a nice goopy caulking gun so I uh guess we're spreading at the old-fashioned way thank you yuck I brought the mold inside so that the silicone would cure and 24 hours later we're ready to pour some epoxy I'm going to be using total boat thick set this is a clear casting epoxy a lot of people use this for River tables so I think it should be perfect for this coffee table shout out to Total boat for sponsoring this video I'm very excited to use this stuff so this resin is a three to one mix ratio I'm not really sure how much I'm going to use for this first pour but I don't know I'll try up to I'll try to the three line to start part A up to the bottom three line and Part B up to the top three line oh this is a lot less viscus so I got this white pigment and I think I only need to add a couple drops so I got this giant syringe to get the epoxy between all of the triangles I'm hoping this makes the application nice and easy and this minimizes the cleanup that we have to do later so we got all that I think we can start spilling over into the sides I gotta say this is using a surprising amount of epoxy so far I did not expect it would take all of this oh this is when I need to start watching for leaks this is when it's going to start happening my original plan was to do two coats I think realistically we might just end up doing three I think that's it [Laughter] oh boy so the resident's been carrying for about eight hours and now I got Eden with me to help with the second coat let's do it milking the cow all right let's pour this resin let's do it take a long walk put the other end in there what all right really pull the trigger though okay I think it's next no you have to make it a lot longer oh my God you didn't tell me this was gonna be an arm workout oh don't okay okay careful you can go faster I want to be pretty opaque so nice excuse me definitely gonna include that in the video oh my God you did not tell me I was gonna have an arm workout tonight you don't need to like do it super fast you can do it slowly like you must suck it up as fast as possible it's like making a cake um not really it's kind of challenging I'm hearing a lot of uh complaining sorry you're right I'm taking off my negative hat and I'm putting on my positive hat when I see a challenge I think learning opportunity here we go you know some people might think you have to go as fast as you possibly can when suctioning up epoxy but slow and steady wins the race life is not a race it is a journey in which there are many races put together what it is like a comically large syringe oh happy in the background hello she's so tired noise you are so aggressive [Laughter] that was wet that was the worst that was wet all right is that it for this batch yeah can we do it again no we have to let this cure if we do too much it'll go exothermic which means it'll generate a ton of heat and bubble and ruin it so we can do another one tomorrow though thank you you're welcome welcome thank you for including me in this fun process oh my God look at my hands it's 12 hours later and I can see now that we did have a bit of leakage but luckily they are very small and hopefully the epoxy that leaked out sealed those gaps so we should be good to go for our third pour let's do it and I have a feeling we're gonna need to do a fourth pour because ah this this mold just takes way more epoxy than I anticipated [Music] all right with that fart that is the last of this pour and I guess we're definitely gonna have to do a fourth pour all right here we go poor number four or is this five I'm kind of starting to lose track at this point it's gonna have to be one more pour we are not quite at the top two days later another kit of total boat fix that arrived so we're ready for the fifth and I hope the final pour this final coat of epoxy will go over top of the wood and I don't want these knot holes getting filled with white so before pouring the epoxy I'm Gonna Fill each knot hole with a bit of super glue so they stay nice and clear and because we're pouring up over the top of the wood anyway I'm not even gonna bother using the syringe I don't think we had to use this in the first place but you know you live and you learn part of me is thinking like what have I done after I put in all that work of carefully putting the epoxy in between the triangles but I know this is the right decision eating can you give me like a piece of cardboard or plastic could you cut it in half so it has a flat face thank you oh my gosh is this not going to be enough I think we did it we got the perfect amount of epoxy in there awesome [Music] so it's been four days since we poured that last coat of epoxy let's demold this thing oh there we go yeah oh yeah yes sir a little oh there we go all right now the part that I'm most nervous about separating this from the bottom um how are we gonna do this if only I could like Flex this board and pop it off nothing this feels risky but I feel like it's the only thing we can really do oh it's already separating I can see it it's flexing oh my gosh I think this might actually be not that bad yes sir I knew it I just needed that bit of flexion oh yes so the next step is to flatten this thing on my router sled this is essentially a big carbide bit and a router on a giant Etch-a-Sketch that will allow us to make each surface perfectly flat we want to flatten both sides so I'm going to start on the bottom so sharp yikes oh okay I need a Band-Aid be careful with the sharp edges of epoxy they can uh I'm not going to show you this but they'll make you bleed [Music] thank you there we go one flat side I'm guessing we had a sag in the center of our mold or the edges lifted up a little bit that's why we have this sort of Bullseye pattern [Music] look at that so for the next step I'm going to use my track saw to trim off the edges so I have an even three quarter inch border all the way around let's do it [Music] ah that even border [Music] so I have spent so much time trying to figure out what I want to do for the base for this table I looked at a lot of metal legs online but none of them seemed right I feel like this thing needs some light colored legs there's a lot of black steel legs online but that just doesn't seem like the right look so I went to my local sawmill and I picked up 11 board feet of two inch thick hard maple I know board feet is a weird measurement so these pieces are six and three quarter inches wide two inches thick 10 feet long cut into two pieces this is some beautiful wood but it is a rough cut so first things first we gotta plane this stuff down now I do have a planer but the cool thing about the router sled is that you can also use it to plain wood let's do it [Music] look at that beautiful hard maple I don't know if that was any faster than planing but definitely ended up with a better surface finish this feels like it's already sanded up to 120 Grit foreign [Music] well I see why they call it hard maple because this wood was incredibly difficult to work with but we got them built and I think these are gonna look awesome next up is everyone's favorite part of a woodworking project I'm minute so I got all the pieces sanded up to 320 grit I water popped the Grain and before I do the final sanding I want to add my branding to the bottom let's do it do this one chance wood foreign for a Finishing Touch I want to add a bevel to the top and bottom edges of the table let's do it [Music] oh whoops this is why I need a bigger Workshop foreign [Music] these legs were a lot more challenging than I expected but we got it let's get it all right so we are finally ready for finish I'm gonna be using Rubio Monaco this is a single coat oil-based finish I've never used this stuff before but I have heard great things only problem is this stuff is expensive and it comes with very specific application instructions if there is any dust on your wood the oil will bond with that dust instead of the wood and you'll get this grit on the surface so I cleaned off everything super well with mineral spirits I finished it off with a microfiber cloth so I think we're good to go let's do it [Music] thank you [Music] so the coffee table is done and now it is time to actually sell this thing first things first let's talk material costs so for the base of the table we used about forty dollars worth of three-quarter inch plywood ten dollars worth of glue we ruined that whole tube of silicone caulk so the whole ten dollars worth of that is going in the materials 107 worth of total boat thick set epoxy that syringe was unusable after three coats of epoxy so the full 16 of that is getting thrown in the material cost we used half of that Maple for the leg so that's 51.77 threaded inserts were 250 four dollars worth of boats Rubio monocoat is an expensive finish the full can is a hundred and fifteen dollars we used about a third so that's 38.33 and then for various consumables like gloves paper towels sandpaper I'll throw in another seven dollars I took some nice photos in my living room and wrote up a social media post that took about an hour that brings our total time spent on this project to 18 hours and 30 minutes now I am really happy with how this table came out considering the labor and the quality of the finish I think that two thousand dollars Canadian or 1500 us is a fair price for that table and that gives us an hourly rate of 92.60 now I really don't want to ship this thing it's so big that I should probably crate it up if I were to send it through a courier service that will be expensive and I'm nervous that it would get damaged in transit I'm a big proponent of trying new things but honestly there are so many people that live in the greater Toronto area that I think I can sell it locally in the post I limited it to Simcoe County York Region and the greater Toronto area that's like a 200 kilometer radius of where I live I made the post about an hour ago it is getting a ton of positive response people love the way that this table looks but that is a far cry from actually buying it so we'll see how it goes and we'll reevaluate the strategy if we need to but for now all we can do is wait for the first three days I wasn't getting any serious offers I tried re-listing the item I also posted it on Facebook Marketplace but still nothing but then I got an idea my short form vertical videos have been getting a lot of views recently that is a huge group of people who might be interested in buying this table so I sat down and I made a short vertical video to show this thing off why does this handmade coffee table cost two thousand dollars let me break it down this took me 18 and a half hours to build and 286 dollars in materials that gives an hourly rate of 92 dollars which goes into paying overhead like rent electricity and Tool depreciation as well as a wage for the person who built it that is me I built it but a table is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it so if you want to buy this table but you think the price is too high make me an offer I must have gotten six offers within 24 hours of posting that video the first one I got was a comment on Facebook this guy Raymond wanted to ask if it would be possible to ship to California now I know I know I said I didn't want to ship this thing but I started thinking about David Shaw from the northern joinery who I interviewed in a YouTube video and how he ships his things all over the world so I thought you know I should reach out to David and see if I can get connected with his shipping guy so I called them up apparently I can ship this thing in pieces to Southern California for about 200 bucks U.S way less than I expected and the more I talk to him the more I realized that it wasn't actually a big deal I can package up the top in a cardboard shipping box with a ton of padding I'll put the legs in a separate box and it'll be no problem and Raymond travels the US in his RV so he said let me put down a deposit and I'll let you know the next time I'm in San Diego and you can ship it to me then I can take my time packaging this up nice I don't have to rush Raymond thank you and I think this is a very interesting lesson so many people are making short form content now and in developing these large audiences there's a lot that you can do something to keep in mind if you're trying to make something to sell so I'll post when I ship this off to Raymond and if you want to see what I'm up to behind the scenes you can gain exclusive access to the behind the scenes Instagram page by supporting this channel on patreon I want to give a special shout out to my top supporter on patreon my mom Kathy Kurt thanks Mom I love you I don't want a disturb Penny she's just chilling thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 341,178

Keywords: make, maker, making, do it yourself, design, morely, kurt, morly, morelykert, morleykert, reclaimed, furniture, money, profit, sell, sold, selling, facebook, marketplace, how, to, beginner, amateur, fun, hardwood, expensive, garbage, trash, find, found, dollars, profitable, saw, garage, reuse, reused, cutting, shipping, business, hourly, rate, wood, scrapwood, scraps, free, router, sled, economics, price, breakdown, cost, costs, scrap, chaise, power, washing, pressure, powerwashing, satisfying, coffee, table, longue, teak, epoxy, resin, pour, mold

Id: 2qrDFrJGJ8g

Length: 24min 32sec (1472 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023