We just got a great sofa for the family room. And what do you need when you have an 8-foot long long sofa and need a place to put a drink? An 8-foot long sofa table!

So Mrs. Mojo commissioned a long, narrow sofa table. It's 8 feet long and only 11 inches deep. I made it out of 1" maple from the orange store. The top, sides, and shelves are made of 1x6 boards joined with a biscuit joiner.

The end that faces the front door is just a plain plank like the tabletop. The other end has shelves where we'll be able to store and charge the ever-growing number of phones, tablets, and e-book readers we're accumulating.

You can't see it in the pictures, but there's a skirt of 1x2 maple running under each side of the tabletop and inside the plain leg. It gives it a heavier look and should keep the tabletop from sagging, even if we put something really heavy on it.

I added some plastic cable grommets to the back of each shelf so we can use the outlets under the table without looking at wires. As a bonus, the grommets gave me an excuse to buy a set of Forstner Bits to make perfect 1⅜ inch holes to put them in. Then I noticed that the grommets are actually 35mm. That's about 0.03 inches bigger than 1⅜. I was able to fix it with sandpaper and determination. It's a good thing they came in a 10-pack, because I broke 4 trying to force them in.

I also picked up a belt sander and a few more bar clamps (because you can never have too many). Then I burned up my old buckethead vacuum and bought a new shop vac. I don't know if that counts as "required" for the project.

To finish the table, I used:

Stainable maple wood filler
80 grit then 150 grit in the belt sander
220 grit in the hand sander
320 grit in a block sander
Pre-stain conditioner
English Chestnut stain
3 coats of satin polyurethane

The project sat in my garage for 4 weeks. I worked off & on, taking frequent breaks to enjoy the awesome Phoenix springtime. It took a few days of work to construct the table, then about twice as long to sand and finish it.