Farmhouse Table Part I

So we're building a table.  By "we", I mostly mean my dad and Matt, but hey, I've been sanding the crap out of all the wood, which counts for something.  That's a lot of work!  :-)  I'm also in charge of staining the whole project (and sealing), which I can only hope won't be a total disaster since that will basically make or break the whole deal.  I've been dying to have a farmhouse table for a long, long time, and now that we have a funky little "dining room" with our cute white bench, I figured now was as good a time as any to try and put one together ourselves thereby saving big buck$.

This is the general idea of the table, except we aren't using real reclaimed wood like this person did... bummer, I know! (Maybe someday we'll replace the top with old wood, but for now, it is what it is!) Hopefully ours will be at least half as cute:

source: Crisp Interiors

We spent most of Sunday afternoon measuring, measuring, measuring, and cutting (and sometimes cutting again) all our wood (which I then sanded and "weathered" by beating with a hammer, scratching with screws, slapping with chains, and generally trying to make it look like it didn't just come out of a giant pile at Home Depot).  My dad and Matt were able to get most of the frame together, and now all that's left is some assembly and the cutting of two final boards that cap off the table at the ends.  And the staining and sealing, of course.

I'll give more detail about the plans we used (ones I stumbled across months ago but knew we couldn't do it til the weather was a little nicer...) and whatnot once we know it can actually function as a table (and we're not too embarrassed by it!).  Things got a bit dicey when we dropped the entire saw on the ground (sorry, dad!!) and part of it shattered.  But the boys trudged on like champs, and despite a few wonky cuts, I think things will turn out just fine.  Fingers crossed!  (THANK YOU to my dad for giving up his time, energy, skills, and tools to help us with this!  And a special shout out to Benjamin who took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon allowing us to get a lot of stuff done!)


Here are some pictures of the day:

our little helper

just watching from the trike...

and now watching from his personal lawn chair

the saw became a two-man job once it BROKE... :(

dry-fitting it together

hammering things

look how much we got done!  (those are the top pieces to the right)

Stay tuned!