My wife decided she wanted a ceiling fan in our living room instead of the chandelier that was hanging there. After I installed the new ceiling fan, I didn’t want to throw away the old chandelier. It was still in good shape, and I just hated throwing things away, so I sat it out in the shop.
For months, I tripped over it and moved it around while I was building my client work. Finally, I had had enough. It was time to figure out what to do with it. After taking a few measurements, I decided it would serve as a nice table base. The main decorative supports measured just less than 18 inches, which would make for a decent height for a plant stand.
Next was to decide what to make the top out of; since the base was black, I decided to use some leftover beetle kill pine I had from the kitchen table build. Once finished, the gray streaks from the beetle boreholes turn a dark grey to black, which would go well with the base.
To start the build, I removed the glass fixtures, got out my cut-off wheel, and started to cut away anything that was not going to be the base of the table. The air-powered cut-off wheel worked well to cut through the welds, and I used my angle grinder to smooth out any sharp areas left.
To help lay out the legs and try to get them to stand flat, I clamped a piece of plywood into the vice so I would have something to help align the legs and mark out where I would attach them to each other and the top.
To assemble it was another challenge; as of this build, I had not replaced my welder, so I could not simply weld the legs together. I decided to bolt them together. I drilled pilot holes and drove some bolts through. To cover up the bolts, I used the same tie wire and wrapped it as neatly as I could around the junction of the legs.
I did run into a bit of a problem where the wire came through to power the light bulbs; I wasn’t sure what to do with the hole. After pondering it for a bit, I decided to use some metal tie wire to wrap around the area with the hole in hopes it would look like a decorative feature. I just took my time when wrapping the wire to make it as neat as possible.
To blend the tie wire and marks left behind by the grinder together, I sprayed on a coat of black paint.
For the top, I used basic woodworking techniques. I jointed the edges of the wood, glued them together, and ran them through the thickness planer to even it all out. I used my shop-made circle-cutting jig to cut it out. My shop-made jig works really well. However, I have been looking at the circle-cutting jig Rockler sells, mainly because it is set to cut an ellipse and a circle.
I finished it using a wipe-on poly from Minwax. I think it turned out pretty well. I do need to revisit either the top by making it smaller or the base to spread out the legs to give it a wider stance. As it sits now, if I put a little weight on the edge, it tips over. I think once I tinker with it a bit, I can solve that issue, and it will be a stable plant stand.