Last year we acquired a small aquarium for my daughter, and then upgraded to a whopping 10 gallon tank. Turned out my wife enjoyed it more than my daughter, so for xmas I bought her a new 55 gallon tank along with the stand that went with it. When I picked up the stuff at the store they told me they recommended against the stand, that if it rusted it could become unsafe. Took it home anyway to see what she thought, just looking at the picture on the box it was one of those steel stands carefully engineered to use the absolute smallest amount of metal required to hold 500 pounds of water. Didn't seem like a good idea, so I returned it.

Still needed a stand, so looked at the others they had to offer. Most were in the $200-$400 range, and while sturdier, didn't exactly seem like fine furniture either, mostly particle board type cabinets. Off to another pet store, and then Wood You, hoping to find something that felt sturdy and looked reasonably decent. Didn't see anything that I thought was good, but wasn't my aquarium, so turned over the search and waited to pay the bill.

Now my friend Steve had suggested I build one, as I'm an an amateur woodworker, but that didn't sound like a great idea. I like building stuff, but most of my projects turn out...not quite Norm Abrams quality, and I didn't want to build something that wasn't going to seem like a good xmas present. If you're married you'll know what I mean - home made stuff doesn't quite work out the same.

So after more looking, finally asks me to try building one. My thought was try it, if it doesn't turn out I've had some fun and spent not a lot to do it, can still order one if I have to.

In addition to not yet being a cabinet maker, my design and artistic skills could use some work too. I hit the web for a while to get ideas, looking for simple and sturdy. Didn't find anything quite what I wanted (one that had a board across two stacks of cinder blocks looked easy enough), finally decided to meld a couple and came up with what you see below. The legs are each two pieces of 2"x6" pine ripped down to 5" and glued up, the cross pieces are 2"x6" also cut to 5" and but joined, the top is glued up from a piece of 2'x12" and a piece of 2"x6" to form a top 15.5" x 51". It's glued with wood glue, and has about 70 3" SPAX screws holding it all together. Corners rounded over, light sanding, and then time to finish it.

I'm not a big fan of staining pine, and we wanted something dark. I put on a coat of wood conditioner, then a coat of a mahogany colored stain - with daughter #1 helping. Didn't come out very dark and while rearranging it to finish the first coat, daughter #2 gleefully upended the quart can of stain on the drive way pavers. So being out of stain and it not looking too great anyway, covered up the pile of stain and decided to paint it. Asked about the color, was told a reddish brown. Now I ask, what are the odds I'd get that right?

Ended up that she bought a Claret Wine paint from Rustoleum. Went on pretty red looking, didn't please her, but figured we'd let it dry and see. Once dry it looked a lot better, good enough that no additional trip for paint was required!

It's not fancy, but it's sturdy (I suspect it would hold a lot more than 500 pounds if needed) and functional, and not bad looking. Total cost was about a $100, probably less if I went with the paint to start with. Took about 10 hours total, could do it in a lot less if used the rough lumber and didn't square it all up, but I wanted it to look some where between lumber yard furniture and a fine cabinet.

Turned out to be fun,and I'm going to try to write up the build as a PDF later in the year, practice for trying to get something published in one of the woodworking magazines.