I have always dreamt of a large, 10-12 person dining room table. We’ve actually had the space for one in a couple of our houses over the years. I’ve never wanted to pay the price for one though! Sticker shock was great. For years I have known of Ana White and explored her website. I also thoroughly love a DIY project AND woodwork. Power tools are SO much fun! I once fawned over a wood shop set up in a house I was looking at and my realtor laughed at me and told me I would definitely love his shop. I’m sure I would Frank.
ANYWAY! I had poured over enough plans and designs and looked at tables to know what I wanted and to have the confidence that I could accomplish it. Joey knew of my table desire, but at first he looked at me like I had three heads. As time went by, and he did some of his own wood projects, he started planning. Of course at that point we didn’t have the space. Life. Now that we are in Kansas and purchased a house very much based on having loved ones over, and often many at a time, we had the space for said table again. We also offered to host Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and a birthday, at our house. With 10-15 people coming over, we suddenly needed a table that sat more than 4!
Mapping out the size of the table based on our design to make sure it fit the space and the desired amount of people.
A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving Joey and I headed to Lowes, and then Home Depot…because neither had EVERYTHING that we needed. We loaded up the truck and headed home just as it started sleeting.
Step 1: Buy materials and dump on garage floor. Brr.
We started tackling it at night as the boys slept. Measuring twice and cutting once. We cut out top for the table and set it up in the dining room. Then we got to use our new kreg jig. Youtube made it easy to see how to use it, and we quickly realized how awesome it is to have! We drilled all of the holes for the table top skirt and drilled them together. It took a lot less time than we anticipated.
This Kreg Jig Pocket Holer is SO nice to have! Pocket holes for everything!!!
The following day I started sanding the table top while the boys were awake. That was fun. The boys looked at me funny while I was sanding and eventually had the great idea to put on their ear protection headphones. Then they went about their business and only checked in on me from time to time. Basically they just wanted to walk over the table top and slide things across it. Liam was thrilled to bust out the tape measure and measure all the things. Somehow everything ended up measuring “48-9”? Eventually I even realized that I had a shop vac and attached it to the sander to lower the dust level in the house. I’m sure I was doing great things for our lungs and sinuses.
That night we repeated the building process for the bench. Not everyone likes sitting on benches, so we decided to make one for one side and let the rest all be chairs. The bench top went together super fast as well. We were rolling along and so we started the table frame, but quickly got very frustrated with our choice of screws. Or so we thought it was our choice of screws. It was becoming a nightmare to get them to go in all the way. We tried a different screw and decided it wasn’t the screw, and that the frames were going to be a nightmare…so we took a break while Joey ran out to buy a nail gun! He just needed a good excuse to get one. After that things went super fast! Joey was on a nail gun high. He let me do a couple.
The building was done! It was time for even more sanding, then filling in cracks, then staining, and then sealing! Wyatt is always the big helper and wanted to help sand with me. Liam just wanted me to make less noise.
I always make my own stain, so I never fully know what color things will be, but I like it more and more each day. Especially after we sealed the wood, which gave a slight sheen to the project. Sadly the wood filler did stain less than the wood, so there are lighter lines running down the table cracks, but the filler has since cracked open…so I will probably be redoing it anyway! Good thing we bought a lot of sealer for the other projects that we have in mind!
We used our existing 4 table chairs and brought in two patio chairs for our celebrations this year. It was so nice getting to sit almost everyone at one table! We will probably find a few fill in chairs at a thrift store eventually. The old kitchen table was quickly turned into a coffee table for the living room that the boys thoroughly enjoy.
Have you tackled any big DIY projects lately?
Leave a Reply