Beer Pong Tables

Advice on building Beer Pong Tables

Large areas of paint:

The best way to do the larger parts of the design is just spray paint with masking tape pressed down to prevent bleeding. Sanding the table down on places where you expect paint edges to be present also cuts down on bleeding. Ours bled a little on most edges, but we just put down white electrical tape on the points where the paint met the wood and it looked fine. If you have the resources, buy/rent a professional-grade low pressure paint spray gun (check out Home Depot or other home improvement stores) and you shouldn't have any bleeding.

Lettering

For the more intricate parts, we got some heavy, glossy paper meant for LaserJet printers, and cut them out by hand. It was a pain, but it was the best way to do it. You can probably get away with thinner paper. Basically, thinner paper is more likely to let the polyurethane soak through, but it's also less likely to stick out of the poly (you can run your finger over the letters in our first table and feel a tiny ridge). If I were you I'd get heavy paper, and then just poly the hell out of it (5+ coats, wait 24 hours between each coat). Oh, and get a clearcoat/polyurethane that goes on clear. The white parts on your table (if any) will get a brownish tint otherwise.

Graphics

For the graphics on our basketball court table (ACC text and the flag) we went to the actual court and just took some digital pictures. With a little help in Photoshop, we were then able to get the graphics the right size and shape (for example, taking a picture of the "ACC" meant that it was kind of like a trapezoid, with the top part of the text not as wide as the bottom, since I took a picture from an angle as opposed to a bird's eye view). Anywho, for those we just went to Kinko's and printed it out on their good computer and color printer. Then we glued it on and polyeurethaned over it. Keep in mind you can always look for graphics online and just print them out (Google has an Image search feature that works well).

Sturdy construction

We don't have any plans drawn out (well, not on my computer anyway), but it's pretty easy to make a sturdy table. If you've got over $150 allocated for this, don't spare any expense on quality. 3/4" pine plywood is the sturdiest non-expensive board you can get. It'll come in an 8'x4' section, but feel free to cut it down (but 8x4 is a nice size). If you've got money to waste, you can even get 3/4" oak. It will look better and is sturdier.

You're going to want to build a sturdy frame underneath the table. A complete border of 2x4s should lay underneath the plywood. This not only looks good, but provides most of the anti-warping support. You're also going to want to spend the extra couple of bucks for two more 8' lengths of 2x4s to lay lengthwise along the underneath of the table (so you'll have something like four 8-foot 2x4s underneath the table lengthwise, and then two 4-foot lengths at the edge). Legs are pretty easy. We use 4x4's, which is sturdy as hell but doesn't look great. If you paint them, they might look fine. In any event, a 3/4" plywood with the said frame underneath will never warp, and can even handle a few drunk college boys standing on top of it (not that I would suggest that).

Misc

Also, get trim for the edge of the table. It's $1/ft. and well worth it. It makes the table look much better, and even stops the occasional ball from rolling off.

And to make sure that the table can handle all the beer that will get spilled, use a ton of polyurethane/clearcoat. If you have the time, do over 5 coats (10 is probably the most you'll need). Follow the directions on can, but you should most likely not do more than one coat a day (bubbles could form if it doesn't dry all the way).