….Using only 1 sheet of plywood!!

Okay, so this modern coffee table is in my top 3 favorite things we’ve ever made. Yes…EVER…like since we bought our first saw and starting building things on our own. This was the first piece we were able to build that wasn’t for a practical purpose, but for the sole purpose of testing our creativity, skills, and eye for design.
For those of you who have never heard of the Modern Maker podcast, it’s a podcast created by Ben Uyeda (HomeMadeModern), Chris Salamone (Foureyes), and Mike Montgomery (Modern Builds). They discuss all sorts of topics pertaining not only to DIY modern
So we started scheming as soon as we heard about the challenge. We couldn’t decide what direction to go – do we try to make as large of a project as we could and have almost no waste from the one sheet, or did we want to highlight the material itself? Do we make a piece of furniture or a piece of art? Do we want to make just one entry or several? After a day or two of thinking I asked myself, “What’s the coolest part of plywood?” The stripes of the layers on the side. “What’s a pattern or design that’s really IN right now?” That curvy M
We decided that day that we wanted to make a herringbone design for a table top and incorporate metal hairpin legs to add to the eccentric modern look (and it was for a competition hosted by guys that specialize in modern furniture, so…ya know…we had that going for us, I guess).
We drew it all up in Google SketchUp so we could calculate how many strips we could get from one sheet while preserving enough material to make a shelf in the table for some storage. After that, we bought some

I’m not kidding, we were so excited about this project (and we wanted to get our build video and Instagram post up as early as possible in the competition) that once we got our hairpin legs in the mail, we built the whole thing in 5 HOURS!! We started by cutting our sheet of plywood to the length that we needed all of the strips to be. We then set our table saw to the proper width and cut out all the strips at one time (
We cut off the excess triangular shaped material from the top of the table and used it to fill the triangular void left at the bottom of the material since this project was all about conserving what little material we got to use! We then buil a simple box with two openings on opposite ends of each other beneath the table top. This made the table a little bulkier (not just one thin sheet of plywood) and provided some storage for practical use. We used pocket holes for this. After the box was completed, we finished the top with some satin polyurethane and attached our black hairpin legs.


And it was done! In all of its modern beauty. At the time, we didn’t have a
So…what was the coolest part about this project for the Rockler plywood challenge??? The guys from the Modern Maker Podcast saw our table on Instagram and discussed it on an episode of the podcast!! It was super awesome to get a shoutout from those guys on a piece we were so excited about. They were discussing 2-3 projects at the end of every podcast during the time the challenge was going on, so if you want to check that out, it’s episode 087!! We had the privilege of meeting Ben, Chris, and Mike at WorkbenchCon this year, and they are all so nice and a blast to hang out with – so go check out their YouTube channels, too!
This post may contain affiliate links for products we used to create this project! If you’d like to check them out, we do get a small percentage of the sale and they are of no extra cost to you! It all goes towards supporting the content creation of Jennie and Davis. BUT – we do not take tool sponsorships and there were no tool endorsements. Just our honest opinions!