We had some folks come over last month for a grill-out, and didn’t have nearly enough seating to accommodate everyone. I decided to build and quick and dirty treated-lumber table that could double as a workbench.
I ended up running out to the hardware store an hour before people were coming over and finished fashioning the top together with recessed lag screws just in time. It was propped up on two saw horses and was garnished with a table cloth. It worked great!
To fulfill its role as a workbench, I thought I’d try to make the legs adjustable, so it can be table height for guests or standing height for working.
Here’s how it went.
Takeaways:
- Treated lumber is not a fine building material. It comes soaking wet and wants to warp. I left the boards air dry for a month but they still retained lots of moisture. It made the adjustable design of the legs impossible, since you would have to destroy the swollen oak dowels in order to remove them.
- You need precision tools to make this design work. Had I chosen a better grade wood for be legs, I still would have needed a gigantic drill press to produce a repeatable hole for the leg boards. There’s no way that the multi-hole adjustable design would ever work without it.
- You need at least two people to move it. It’s insanely heavy. It needs permanent casters in order to move it, but that would make it unusable as a table. So it’s not all that functional, but works fine for most things.