This Amazon Buy is the Secret to Designing Your Own Furniture

Stop. Buying. Terrible: Coffee tables. Media consoles. Desks. Moving into a new apartment does not require immediately buying a $50 rectangle made of papier mache and spit. Furnishing your home should be a fun and engaging exploration and expression of your own creativity. Now, this might sound easier said than done—I doubt most of you are carpenters, interior decorators, and/or Restoration Hardware diamond members. Luckily, you can create your own unique furniture pieces without being any of these, and on the cheap, thanks to hairpin legs.

Steel hairpin legs are like $7 cold brew: hipster catnip and honestly pretty awesome. They instantly add a refined, minimalist look to whatever piece of wood you place on top that feels at once modern and rustic industrial. It takes zero special skill to install hairpins—you only need a drill or screwdriver. 16 inch sets (coffee table height) are available for less than $30 and 28 inchers (desk/console/dining table height) can be had for less than $50.

Here are but a few of the many pieces of wood you can combine with those hairpin legs to create a piece of furniture that is truly your own.

Barrel heads make great coffee or end tables that say “I have style, and my drinking is mostly under control!”

Use one crate to make an elevated basket for hats/gloves/whatever, or screw together multiples of four in a square pattern to make geometrically pleasing coffee tables and bookshelves.

One man’s trash is another man’s trash with hairpin legs on it. These can make excellent tables of most any kind, and you can usually find used pallets for cheap on Craigslist.

Why not make your own dinette or prep station? Because you hadn’t thought of it until now, had you?

Instant. Dining. Table.

Ooooh, now we’re getting all artsy.

This is a project I’m looking to try out myself: attach legs to one tread, then stack several more on top as shelves with the help of the hairpins’ cousin, iron pipe.

Make an extra long sofa or console table out of one of these bad boys. Better yet, find an old, reclaimed door at a local salvage yard and be your own Chip & Joanna.