Designing a Large Coffee Table with DVD Storage Drawers.

Having built in drawers underneath a large coffee table presents the particular design challenge of supporting the weight of the drawers and their contents.
This particular table is rather large: 1280mm x 980mm, to be exact, and is to have four drawers to run on proprietry steel runners with nylon wheels.
The top image on the left shows the basic framework of the table, before the drawer supports are fitted. The support for the drawer runners at either end are simple enough, as they can be attached to the end frames. For the central supports, I have made the top lengthwise rails 100mm deep as they will need to support a central frame, which will carry the steel runners in the centre. As this project proceeds, I'll add images showing how this objective is achieved.

The end support is now shown on the left. A spacer has been glued to the bottom rail of the endpanel, and the drawer runner support has been glued to the spacer, and the top fixed to the legs with angle brackets.

This central frame will transmit the weight of the drawers from the runners to the rails, and thence to the legs. Once again, it is fixed to the rails with metal angle brackets. The framework of the table is now extremely rigid and should carry the weight of the four drawers and their contents without any danger of sagging.

And this is how it turned out: the finished coffee table with the drawers fitted.

The Coffee Table

With its placement in a central position in your main living space, the coffee table is arguably the single most important piece of furniture you will purchase.
The coffee table, from its probable inception as a 28" high, two tier table, designed by E.W. Godwin in Victorian times, has evolved over the years into the long low table that we recognize today.
Once constructed out of wood, coffee tables are to be found nowadays in a wide variety of forms and materials: from the natural beauty of various hardwoods, to the more modernest examples using stainless steel and polished glass for instance. Their function has also expanded since those humble origins as a resting place for a cup of coffee. Today, a coffee table is just as likely to incorporate a magazine shelf, or drawers underneath the top, (perhaps for housing D.V.D.s, or the myriad remote controls which exist in a modern household): in effect, becoming a multi-storage unit as well as a table. Less conventionally, there are also examples of coffee tables being used to house anything from a fish tank, to a pin ball machine.
But whether your taste is for a sparse, minimalist, modern design, or a homely, more traditional style, chose your coffee table well: it occupies the pride of place in your household.