Do It Yourself Tuesdays: The Bottle Cap Table

It’s not always easy to make a college dorm room all your own with the standard res hall-issued furniture you’ve got in there. Sure, you can stack it up all nice and hang some fun pictures on the wall, but sometimes you want something a little different and cool to complete your pad.

Like a fun table, perhaps?

This awesome Bottle Cap Table is easy to make and will score you some major cool points from your friends, neighbors and maybe even your R.A. (as long as you don’t let him see you “collecting” bottle caps in your dry dorm). Plus, actually making the table is a party on its own: “Hey, let’s get a 12-pack of Miller Light. I have a craft project to do!”

What You’ll Need:
- Bottle caps
- Table
- Super glue (if the glue isn’t sticking well with the table, try contact cement)
- Resin (ex. Envirotex Lite)
- Masking Tape
- Aluminum foil
- Duct tape

Start Building!

1) Collect bottle caps. Ways to do this include befriending the neighborhood bartender, scouring the alleys behind bars, and buying microbrews based on how cool the caps look and not how good the beer tastes.

2) Pick a table. Head over to your neighborhood craft store, scour Craigslist or roam the streets for someone’s throwaways. Any size and shape will do.

3) Lay out your design. You could do anything from laying out similar caps in rows to creating an actual picture based on the colors.

4) Glue it down. Just remember that the bottle caps should be face down like on top of a bottle. Apply the glue generously around the edges of the cap and stick those suckers down. Make sure they’re really on there so they don’t move during the next step.

5) Wrap tape around the outside of the table. This is to make sure the glue and resin don’t run down the sides.

6) Build a barrier. Take a long piece of foil, fold it and build it up around the outside of the table (like a mini-fort) and duct-tape it on. This will build as a barrier to keep your resin from dripping all over your room.

7) Cover with resin. Follow the instructions inside the box on how to mix it then spread on a layer thick enough to cover the entire table and make an even surface.

8 ) Remove the barrier/tape, then let the table dry for 8-10 hours.

9) Put that table out on display, kick back with a beer (or some other beverage if you’re sick of the brewskis by now) and enjoy!