I needed some kind of side-table thingamajig for beside my couch, so naturally, I have been spending inordinate amounts of time on craigslist looking for something appropriate. 

I had my eye on a teak side table for a week or so, but the guy was charging something completely ridiculous like $125.00, and since my existing teak side table was procured for $20.00, paying more that five times that for essentially the same table made my heart hurt with money pains.  So I scrapped that.

Besides, I think I’m “over-teaking” it in the loft right now.  Teak credenza, teak coffee table, teak lounge chairs, and (the $20.00) teak side table… I mean I really like teak, but it’s starting to look like someone had teak diarrhea.

So then, I thought I would try to find a vintage trunk and “carelessly place it” next to my couch, so that it looks like I’m all laid back and have a trunk, and like, just keep it as my side table, like a trunk-having badass.  But then:

1. Nice vintage trunks are fucking expensive; and
2. For some reason I’m convinced that all old trunks have bedbugs/earwigs/centipedes/ghosts hiding in them, and they freak me out a little bit.  Like, I’m worried that one day I’ll randomly open up my trunk and find a bunch of skulls with worms crawling out of their eyeball sockets, and I’ll hear a child’s voice whispering from the trunk with the faint, barley audible whistle of the wind, saying “yooouuu’re neeexxxt”.  Yes, I am crazy.

One of my main problems is that I always look to buy new things instead of just re-working the old stuff I bought for no reason months ago.  For example, two months ago I bought four old apple crates from UpsideDive in a frenzy because I felt I needed to have something to fill up some space in my office for my housewarming party (in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that everyone was too drunk-slash-marvelled-by-my-social-poise-and-effervescence to notice the pile of dirty old crates in the corner, but whatever).

This weekend I finally got my shit together and built a shelving system for the office (more on that later), and my poor dirty apple crates were left homeless.

DOUBLE SUPER HAPPY SOLUTION: Make one of the apple crates into a side table.

Step One
Get the apple crate, and buy four casters.  Try to simultaneously entertain small dog who refuses to leave you alone, despite seeing you occupied building fancy apple-crate side table.

Step Two
Screw the casters to the bottom of the apple crate.  I only used one screw per caster because I only had four screws that were short enough and I’m too lazy/cheap to go buy more. 

Step Three
Take arty pictures of new “apple-crate-side-table” and sit back, absorbing multiple compliments from guests who think you are like, totally creative and stylish.