Inspiration: Four Rustic Tables Made from Scrap Lumber

The great thing about the rustic furniture trend is that you can take something kind of rough-hewn, and it's suddenly fashionable. Have you seen the Restoration Hardware catalog recently? People will pay a lot of money for wood furniture that looks like it was salvaged from somebody's attic. People will pay even more if the furniture looks like it was taken from a barn.

I'm not making fun of folks who buy distressed furniture. If I were, I would be making fun of myself. The centerpiece of my own living/dining room is a rough-looking reclaimed barnwood dining table. It's a big solid table that seats 8, which I bought from Modern Rust, a small company run by two carpenters near Washington D.C. Sometimes I get annoyed that my table's a little bit warped and its base is uneven, and the top has these cracks that crumbs get stuck in. But you know what? It's a great table. It has character, and nobody else in the neighborhood has the same one.

The fact that my table looks like someone went out in a barn and hammered it together adds cool to my living/dining room. You can add cool to your house (or patio, or office) by building yourself a table made of scrap lumber. If you don't have scrap lumber, some of the following tables can be made with cheap boards from your local home improvement store.

This rugged coffee table is constructed of old cedar fence boards. It is what is known, in the world of retail furniture catalogs, as a "factory cart table." The weathered planks actually cover a frame made from regular home improvement store lumber.

Once again, you're looking at a reclaimed lumber tabletop (this one is old deck boards). It sits on top of a base made from conventional lumber.

This long reclaimed lumber desk is composed entirely of salvaged shipping pallets. Cost to its maker? A mere $3 for new screws. The desk was made by Donna of Funky Junk Interiors, one of my favorite DIY remodeling experts.