For a boy who grew up in the country, I can't picture myself living anywhere but Downtown. I love city life and all the conveniences that come with it. The advantages do come with tradeoffs though. One being space. Don't get me wrong, our home is plenty big at just over 2100 sq ft but the individual spaces in the house tend to be narrow and smaller. I'm typically not big on furniture placement on a room's perimeter but after several rearrangements it's just what works the best for us to maximize our space.
Our new sofa is 44 inches deep, perfect for snuggling back in a corner of the cushions with a good book, movie or football game and nesting the day away. However, since I hate "end tables" even more than furniture around a room's perimeter, I found myself in a pinch on where to put the lamps for reading and where to set my beverage. I needed a ledge, just a small one right behind the sofa that was easily reachable when I was all tucked in. Since we are on a budget with this remodel, I decided I'd just build one myself. Shockingly it was super easy.
I measured the length of my sofa and then reduced that by 2 inches on each end so it would tuck right in behind, then I measured the height from the floor to just shy of the top of the sofa back. Did you know that most of the big box home improvement stores will cut your wood to size for you free of charge? Take advantage of that! I purchased 1x8 finished pine and had the urban lumberjack cut it. One board to the length I needed and then had another piece cut into 3 pieces matching the height I needed (My measurement minus 1" since I was putting an inch thick board on top of them). Measure twice, cut once is the rule but I like measure once have someone else cut it so it's right even better. Then I found an 8' length of 1x2 and had him cut it into eight pieces the exact width of the top board for support braces. Since lumber is never a true size, a 1x8 is really only about 7 7/8" wide make sure they use your top board to cut your brace pieces.
Forgive my lack of skills in graphics creation but I thought this would be the easiest way to show construction. I screwed the 1x2 pieces to the top and bottom inside of the two end pieces and on both sides top and bottom of the center support. This enabled them to stand. Then with assistance I laid my top board across the three supports (legs if you will), making sure the center support was centered and the end pieces were flush. Shooting 3 screws through the top board into the top of each support making sure to countersink them a bit. Then I went over the entire piece filling wood putty in on top of the scews and filling in any cracks or seams. Remember it's going to be between the sofa and the wall and primarily out of view so you don't have to go for perfection here. After the wood putty dries, sand the entire piece with some fine sandpaper to smooth all your surface. Choose a stain color or you can paint it if you wish and finish your piece.
Here's a few more photos of mine:
Once you place the piece behind the sofa, you really don't see it from most angles in the room. Here is what mine looks like when you are standing in the middle of the room:
And then a reverse a view from the picture at the top:
While it's certainly not a piece you would find in an expensive furniture store, it's sturdy and does the job it needs to do without being an eyesore. The best part........my total cost of materials was $45 dollars and it took about 30 minutes to build and about 30 minutes to apply the 3 coats of stain. For a very small investment of time and money, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!
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