In 95 my lovely wife Mic and I went to Porta Vallarta for Christmas and New Years (We flew in on a whim hoping we could get a place to crash...). Mic wanted to bring something back for the house so we went to a tile shop and bought the tiles in the first picture. We've been dragging them around the world in the same box they were originally packed in, complete with the Porta Vallarta Semanal Noticias wrapped around each tile for the past 18 years. They've lived in a tiny rusting tin and extremely hot shed for the past 9 years, I'm surprised the box and news papers haven't rotted away, until about 2 weeks ago when I happened upon them and thought I need to do something with these… I've been making shutters for the house lately and have had a bit of extra pine laying around so what better to do than make a coffee table… I wanted it to have a Mexican flavour so in my usual style I google imaged mexican coffee table and spent a few minutes looking at the various pictures that popped onto my screen. Then I went to the shop and tried to make what I took from that time… For the most part I think t turned out pretty good. When I look at it I know there's something not quite right with it but I can't put my finger on it quite yet - any ideas. Not that I can change it now though but I'm still interested in what you may think didn't quite work. In the second pic the legs look too long but in reality they are pretty much where they want to be…
The construction is completely neander, and the finish is about 10 coats of orange shellack with a dark wax buff. To add a bit of a story I gave it a bit of a beating between coats with a dark stain to bring out the dents… The secondary wood for the drawer sides, back and bottom is something I scrounged from a reno job of a circa 1880s house I was doing but have no idea what it is. It looks like a mahogany but I really have no idea.
At the very least it put a smile on Mic's face, during a difficult time, to see the tiles being used, she had written them off years ago and thought they were forever lost in one of the moves. I don't think she even knew they had been carted all the way down here...
Edit: now that I look at it, it looks like the table needs to be longer and maybe a bit wider. It almost looks top heavy. But the constraints of the tiles limited the over all foot print.