cost of pine? making a coffee table
 

Hey all I am in the market to make a small coffee table for my basement home theater room, nothing really special just a place to put my feet and hold the remote control. was looking at making a table out of pine, about 4ft long, 2ft wide and 14inches tall. was thinking about using pine planks, about 3-4inch wide and putting 4 of them together to make the top, running 2 equal width boards under the planks to hold them together, and using the same type of wood to make just easy X style legs. any idea what the wood would cost? as well, i only have a 2002 malibu and would have to have the wood fit in the car:p i am in canada and have access to all the big stores, home depot...rona..etc, any americans have an idea what that wood would cost if no canadians are sure as i imagine the price is similar. thanks folks.

My best guess would be that enough pine will run you about $CAN 30-45, depending on the size of the boards. My further advice would be not to bother making a table out of pine, as even with a finish it will be pretty soft, easily dented, etc. I have worked extensivly with clear and knotty pine and have developed a definite love/hate relationship with it.

If you're looking for a cheap/nothing special table, just head to IKEA. They can do cheap cheaper the the average do it yourselfer.

just ventured over to ikea.ca and got a look at there tables...............................they are cheap eh, will be heading to toronto on the weekend i guess. freaking hell, how can they do it so cheap......not complaining just crazy! might get this one and lop off the legs to the required height.
http://www.ikea.ca/webapp/wcs/stores...ts=10117*10310

thanks again!

or this one... :)
http://www.ikea.ca/webapp/wcs/stores...ts=10117*10311

Or go to ebay. I built a walk-in humidor in my basement to hold my cigars. I had a bitch of a time finding spanish cedar, which is very very expensive and rare. I found it for next to nothing on ebay.

That's the first thing I thougt. Pine is cheap, but soft as hell. Breathing on it will dent the thing.

Oak or maple, while running you quite a bit more, will last longer.

i've got some pine shelves and they are hard as a rock, but decided with the ikea idea as the price is just so hard to beat, as well the wife went coco for coco-puffs when i said i wanted to drive to ikea on the weekend for some shopping. only married for a few years but learned shopping equals damn good bj's....:D

Yeah, go with IKEA unless you want the manly satisfaction of having built something yourself. Regular pine is pretty cheap (it grows fast), and will mar like mad.

still have not made the trip to toronto yet, no ikea in my town.

Like others said: skip the pine, unless you can get Heart Pine, but its expensive as all hell if you can even find it.

cherry is relatively cheap and good looking
then theres walnut which is about 70cents more expensive in seattle. theres also ash which is cheaper than walnut and a tad more expensive then cherry.
btw ikeas cheap because they often use partical board for things and that is a hell of a lot cheaper than hardwoods.

I'm not a fan of the ikea idea due to not getting the satisfaction of building it yourself. I would rather get something at a pawn shop, ebay, or a Savers type shop and then refinish it.

Cherry is a gorgeous wood! Build it with that and then just put a clear varnish over it to protect it and you'll have something so beautiful that you won't want to put your feet on it!:lol:
Pine may be soft and ding easily, but it is cheap. I have all wood furnature and most of it is pine. It's actually really nice wood dispite it being soft. Plus you can stain it to look like any other wood, such as oak, maple, cherry, walnut, etc. So if I were in your position, I'd use pine if I didn't mind it being soft, and cherry if I wanted a hard wood.

I like pine for it's cheapness as well. Don't worry about the dings; your not building a heirloom china cabinet just a place to put your drink.

Besides which every dent can be a reminder to a story: "that's where I banged by knee after shootin' everclear"; "there's where I tripped in the dark watching _Tomb Raider_"; "Here's where the wife and I .... well I wont get into that :)"

Round these parts, cherry is somewhat expensive, not really anything you could call 'relatively cheap'. Its more expensive then maple. Red or White oak is relativly cheap, aspen is even cheaper, about on par with poplar. Walnut and Ash aren't usually available, I hate to think about what they would cost.

Probably a case of supply and ecomics, but I would very much like to get cheaper cherry. I recently priced out g2s 1/4 cherry ply at $134 (can) for a 4x8 sheet.

This is true to a point. I am not really a defender of IKEA or anything like that, I didn't really like the place long before Tyler Durden said 'deliver me from sweedish funiture'. However, even as a somewhat handy person, I simply can't seem to find anything of comparable quality for near the price. Sure, if I had more money I would like everything made out of higher quality wood, handcrafted, etc. But that just isn't an option yet.

While pricing out a section of book shelves, only particleboard/melamine types were in my price range. The ones at ikea were cheaper and higher quality then at any other store we looked at, and were still cheaper when I priced out matierials to do it myself.

Further, alot of their tables/stools/etc are of solid wood. Not hardwood, mostly pine and birch, but solid wood nonetheless.

Ikea is cheap because of the mass 'wallmart factor'. They are huge, multinational, efficent, and popular. They can make everything in such numbers with interchangable parts and hardware that they are cheaper then most anywhere else.

While strapped for cash last fall and needing to furnish a new apartment, my girl and I ended up with a table, 4 chairs, and a large set of bookshelves from ikea. Sure it was easy to assemble, but they still came in flat boxes and you can pretend you are a manly man while putting it together.

lol, still have not drove up there, so little time with the new baby and all.

I guess it would make sense that wood in Canada costs different than wood in the US. But still pine is really cheap (in price and quality) but if all your looking for is a cheap table, then go for it. I would go for cherry myself, but cherry is available here and therefore not that expensive.