Junk In the Trunk
By Christa TerryWhen I was leaving for university, my mom and I came across a trunk when we were shopping to furnish my dorm room. It wasn’t anything fancy — not a lovely vintage steamer trunk or a handcrafted leather trunk or anything like that — but it was nice to have. Funny, it wasn’t even particularly good for hauling stuff since the handle wasn’t comfortable and it was kind of bulky. After I graduated, it languished in the basement until I moved into an apartment in Massachusetts, where it gained a new life as a coffee table after my new oversize couches made having a full-size coffee table impractical.

Now my living room is even smaller, and I’m still trying to squeeze in a good amount of furniture. That shoddy old trunk is still pulling its weight as a coffee table and as a storage space for boardgames, old Nintendo consoles, and video game cartridges. And you’d never know that we hide our secret immaturity in there, since it looks rather highbrow in an old fashioned sort of way.

Both of the above trunks are available at Pottery Barn, though I’d recommend scouring garage sales and estate sales for some old trunk lovingly battered by college students and other assorted youngins. It’ll have more character that way… and be wicked cheaper.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I built a modified version of a trunk table – I’d suggest thinking about proportion. The client thought it was out of proportion to the rest of the living room because it was too low.