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As many of you have already read, I now own a ceramic cooker, called the Big Green Egg. When deciding on what type of stand to get, I decided on a table, but the BGE website listed them for $450-$550, which was nearly as much as the Egg, itself. My lovely wife suggested we build our own, which sounded like a great idea. I searched the internet for plans and found a great set of plans from the folks at NakedWhiz.com (I don’t know why they call themselves that, but I like it.). I thought the plans and process deserved rave of their own.
The plans (found in the first external link) give great step-by-step directions, with pictures and the author’s own personal notes. I, with the help of my Father-in-Law, made a few minor adjustments.
Our first stop was the Home Depot. We used the much cheaper cedar, instead of the recommended oak. When I was pricing lumber, the cedar was $3.80 for an 8’ board, compared to oak, which was $3.50/ft! The cedar we got is decking, with nice rounded edges. Our other material-related modification was using 2x4s for the legs and under bracing, instead of 1x4s. The way I figured, I was going to be placing a 150 pound ceramic cooker in there, so more bracing and stronger bracing couldn’t hurt. All in all, we spend about $130 in supplies, for lumber, wheel hardware, and the tiles (which were found in the bathroom department).
Tim and I only hit one road block, which is way less than I was expecting. I knew before we started that we would make a mistake. It was only a matter of when and how bad. We accidentally placed a couple of pre-drilled boards on backwards, which resulted in trashing only one piece of wood. It only set us back about 45 minutes.
The whole project took the two of us about 10 hours, over two days. We accomplished the whole thing with a table saw, a Skil saw, drill, a boat-load of deck screws, and a couple of Henry Weinhard Pale Ales.
If you own a Big Green Egg (or plan on getting one), and if you have the know-how (or a highly-talented father-in-law), I cannot recommend the Naked Whiz table plans enough.
(The second link is a photo documentation of the process. Enjoy!)