DIY Adirondack Table Plans for Free

Table Surfaces

For the top of our Adirondack table, we’ll be using 3 oak stair risers that are 48″ x 7.5″ x 3/4″. These can be purchased at either Home Depot or Lowe’s if you’d like to follow along exactly. With that being said, we certainly welcome you to explore other wood species, lengths, & shapes. Moving down to the optional lower shelf, we’ll be using 2 more of the same 48″ x 7.5″ x 3/4″ boards. Though this shelf is optional, it’s an easy extra step that provides your table with better support.

For the long runners supporting the top, the cross members will connect at each leg. On the bottom, the long runners will connect to each of the end cross members. We’ll fully illustrate this in a later step.

Solid Wood Legs

3″ x 3″ hardwood boards will do the trick for the legs of our DIY Adirondack Table. Since 3″ x 3″ square boards aren’t always available, there are a few different options here. If you feel confident with you joining skills, you can glue 3 boards together that are 3″ x 1″. Depending on how your lumber store does its pricing, it may be cheaper (or more expensive) to go this route. The obvious downside of this option is that it adds an extra step to your project. Another option to consider is looking for square dowels that are in this size. For any lumber store that offers manufactured woods (dowels, molding, etc.), consider this direction before whipping out your glue.

Assembling the Legs of Our Outdoor Table

For our table’s wood frame, we connected the posts to the cross members with mortise & tenon joints. If you’re not familiar with this style of joinery, a mortise hole is drilled into the post of the table. This pocket is designed to tightly hold the tenon tongue, which is the end of a cross member. Generally speaking, the tongue should always be smaller than the rest of the cross member. For height, we generally recommend at least .75″ of separation between the top of the cross member and the top of the tenon tongue. With any less, we risk breaking the top of the table’s leg. The bottom, on the other hand, only needs about .25″ of clearance.

The primary reason for making the tenons smaller is to hide errors in the mortise holes. Since it’s nearly impossible to get a perfectly rectangular mortise hole, the over-hanging lips on a cross member cover the imperfection. On the sides, about .125″ is enough room for error.

Adirondack Table Top & Shelf

The top of our table is fairly straight forward—space the three slats .25″ apart. The .25″ separation isn’t a hard number if you want to deviate in either direction. With that being said, we don’t recommend increasing the gap as items will be more prone to falling through the cracks. For the length, you may certainly explore longer slats to increase the table’s width. This will also allow you to round the ends into curvilinear tips.

On the other hand, the bottom shelf is a bit more particular. We trimmed these boards down to 44″, which is the width of our frame. Thus, the ends of the shelf shouldn’t extend beyond the posts. In terms of spacing, we opted for .5″ as these types of shelves aren’t generally used for smaller items. If you’d like to change the spacing, be mindful that you’ll need to adjust the shorter cross members as well.