DIY A Faux Stone Waterfall Coffee Table With An Affordable Piece Of Material

Being creative and practical sometimes involves a little bit of deception. This is certainly true with this DIY coffee table that people have been raving about on TikTok. A video shared by content creator @strandtowels demonstrates how you can build a faux stone waterfall coffee table using a rather unlikely material: Styrofoam. Like most viewers, you probably wonder if this lightweight plastic is really robust enough to be a piece of furniture. In this case, a wooden skeleton acts as a structural frame, keeping the table upright. The foam then serves as padding over the frame. In a separate video, the TikTok user shows how they covered the table with an outer shell made of a plaster mixture to give it its stone-like appearance.

Replicating this backyard project will naturally involve some carpentry and masonry skills, but when done correctly, it presents an affordable and creative idea for a unique coffee table. Apart from the Styrofoam boards, you will also need spray foam and construction wood for the frame, and some stucco and a sack of pebbles for the outer coating. This is the perfect opportunity to make use of excess building materials that you may have stashed from your previous projects. As for the required tools and equipment, be ready with a wood saw, a screwdriver, wood screws, construction glue, buckets, a handheld cement mixer, and a trowel.

To re-create this DIY piece of furniture, start by building the frame. Dimensional lumber, such as two-by-four wood planks or ply board, will do well for this. You can also choose to upcycle pallet wood to construct your furniture's skeletal structure so long as it's in decent condition. The size of your table, meanwhile, is entirely up to you. To achieve a waterfall effect, however, the frame has to follow an inverted U shape with a horizontal piece fixed perpendicularly atop a pair of legs. Bear in mind that the table top must also have no overhang, and all three components must have the same width. Once the frame is ready, you can start covering it with the Styrofoam boards. 

If possible, opt to use construction-grade Styrofoam, as it has relatively high density ratings. Cut the boards into the right shape and size to cover all sides, and glue them firmly in place. Fill any interior gaps or cavities with spray foam, as these can form cracks and weaken the table. Then, add extra padding to the underside corners where the horizontal and vertical pieces meet. These will provide the required mass when you carve these areas later. Before this, however, you must wait until your adhesive is completely dry.

The sculpting part is needed to shape the table corners into a curved form, creating the illusion that the furniture is one continuous sheet. You can use a heated spatula or knife to chisel through the foam. Once you have achieved the desired shape, sand the entire body of your table. This is important to provide a rough surface for the stucco to cling to since you'll be applying it next. At this point, the only element missing from your coffee table is the chic stone appearance. Creating this requires a method called pebble dashing, a technique usually used as a decorative finish for plaster walls.

Basically, a pebble dash or roughcast finish is created by coating a surface — usually a wall or a pavement — with a thin layer of cement, sand, and lime, which will then hold the final coating of pebbles, gravel, or shells. To eliminate any waste material, try collecting the pellet shavings of the sanded Styrofoam and throwing them into your mixture as additional aggregates. If you want to explore more alternatives, you can crush broken pieces of terra cotta pots too. This DIY hack could also be a creative way to upcycle old furniture by salvaging its frame and giving it a faux stone Styrofoam top piece.