Not so long ago, if you wanted a customized piece of indoor or outdoor furniture you most likely had to pay a craftsperson or company to make it for you. Although the option of DIY furniture design was always available, you were like a ship without a sail if you lacked the serious carpentry or welding skills necessary to execute the design.

Today, you can fearlessly voyage into the great home, office or industrial furnishings unknown by building furniture with pipe and fittings. Sleek, beautiful and durable fittings allow you to transform ordinary galvanized pipe into industrial-style works of art whose form flows almost as easily as its function.

The Pros and Cons of Building Furniture With Pipe and Fittings

The first major advantage of using malleable iron pipe fittings to design and construct your own furniture pieces is its inherent versatility. You can just as easily build a bench out of fittings and pipe as you could a shelf, a coffee table, a retail display rack, an outdoor kitchen or a desk.

Truth be told, your imagination is the only limit to the types of furnishings you can create using pipe and fittings. Once you learn the basics of building furniture with pipe and fittings, you’ll quickly begin to see how you can upcycle unused home, office and industrial items into highly utilized, operative furniture.

Building furniture with pipe and fittings can be very cost effective. Building your own desk made with a custom wood top and an adjustable pipe and fitting base can be around half the cost of buying a high end adjustable desk. In addition to the initial cost, you will get decades of use out of your piece, as well as the added benefit of modularity.

The Rising Popularity of Pipe Furniture

The recent economic downturn left many people searching for new ways to create high-quality, inexpensive functional furnishings. Since building furniture with pipe and fittings is more cost-effective over the long haul than traditional, factory-made indoor and outdoor furnishings, this type of DIY custom furniture is currently rising in global popularity.