I swore I took a before picture of this before I started it but I can't seem to find it now.
Anyway. We have an oval coffee table that I've grown fond of. It's junky IKEA with a shitty wood laminate on the surface. After many years of use the shitty laminate was cracking and peeling off.
I'll never own a square coffee table again. As a big guy I tend to fit into the appropriate spaced couch coffee table set ups a little less gracefully than some other people do. After we went to an oval coffee table I tended to bash my shins and knees a lot less. If you are going to have kids, let me tell you, they are going to bash their heads on some stuff. If you don't have sharp edged corners it's going to be a lot less hideous. Kids always seem to be able to earn a shiner or a goose egg the day before a pediatrician visit.
So anyway, I cut a blank from a sheet of maple veneer, just a bit bigger than the table itself. I glued, clamped and sanded it down to size.
Here it is with the first coat of stain.
It than polyurethaned it and buffed it out with fine steel wool.
Here it is in the living room, same stain as I used on the entertainment center.
I suppose I've been subconsciously preparing for the rainy Portland winter, when I'll be chased off my deck and into the living room. If I had it too do again I would have used an oak veneer but the oak was three times as expensive and I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out.
Buddy of mine dated a girl with this awful post-modernist purple velour ikea couch. It was literally a fucsia square with a purple bolster bolted to it. He ambushed me by telling me we were "going shopping for some new furniture for me" (I'd just moved into an apartment) and then I find out he told this girl to stay home all day and he'd bring me by. So I bought a really awful Ikea couch for $100 and this thing for another $100. Fast forward two years to when I can move out of that shithole apartment into a better one with my wife and my actual furniture and he buys the awful fucsia thing for $75. And then he takes the legs off and powder-coats them. And then he takes the cushion off and gets it reupholstered in black leather. And there it is - a black leather marshmallow from Ikea that nobody wanted in the first place, is still ridiculously uncomfortable, but now has half a thousand dollars of sunk cost fallacy into it.
This was my fear when I started this project and why I didn't spring for the oak. The table is built all right and it was wood under the laminate so I had hopes. I couldn't find a rounded edge table I liked for under $400 and we have other goals for our furniture budget right now. I did the whole thing for under $100 but a lot of that expense is stuff I'll use again like new jigsaw blades, sand paper and steel wool. Hopefully I'll find something to coat in polyurethane soon (don't use poly that's over a year old is another lesson I've learned the hard way). If this didn't work I'd have given up on the project and bought a damn square cornered coffee table and bashed my shins up when I'm in my cups.
If you want to do something like this I have one other thought. Use a lot of clamps and use better glue than Elmers wood glue. I used good glue but I only have 6 clamps. I'd use a dozen if I had them. An old cabinet maker told me that I should start buying clamps and keep buying them until I think I must have too many wood clamps at which point I should buy one more clamp. He was right.
1/8 inch. Cut with a jig saw bearing a brand new blade. I cut it a little more than an 1/8 of an inch larger than the table to avoid splintered edges but the cut turned out very smooth. There was a lot of sanding involved but I have an old electric sander. It was a very clean looking well glued piece of ply. There is a lumber yard that specializes in hardwood plywood close to the house. The prices and quality are way better than I've seen other places. Really wish I'd used oak now.
Did you also use a strip to resurface the edge? I might do the same thing to a dining room table I have.