Today’s guest post is from Ashley @ Attemps at Domestication. She’s got some great ideas for sprucing up your space, so definitely check out her blog. And if you didn’t get a chance to peek at our event announcements in Richmond and NoVA, be sure to check those as well!
My husband and I love entertaining, but our small kitchen table was just not cutting it for both our space and our hosting abilities.
We decided that instead of searching for the perfect table and spending a ton of money, we would just build our own table. The project was surprisingly simple and turned out way better, and more inexpensive than we imagined, plus we absolutely love the table!
When we first started this project we did a whole lot of research on how best to go about building our own table. My major source of inspiration was Michelle’s kitchen table but her’s was not quite big enough for Jesse and I’s plans for our space. However, Michelle got her plans from Ana White’s blog so that is where we went searching for plans for our own table. We found that her Rustic Table plans best matched what we were looking for, but my husband, being the detailed person that he is didn’t just want to take her measurements and run with them. So we taped off the floor around our old table to decide how large we wanted our own table to be.
Then we went to Lowe’s with our measurements and got all of the supplies we needed. My husband had the day after we bought all of the supplies off work, so he started working without me. But he was a good little blogger husband and remembered to take some pictures. He basically followed Ana White’s plans to a T. Until it got to the legs. Ana White used 2×4’s for her legs, but we decided we liked the look of chunkier 4×4 legs instead. Hubby also did things in a different order, like attaching the legs to the apron before attaching the table top.
This did make everything way easier when it came to painting, no tape needed! We also stained the bottoms and sides of the tabletop boards before attaching them to the apron.
After the top was attached I stained the top side and applied about 3-4 coats of Matte polyurethane. I like the matte finish because it doesn’t add any sheen and makes things look even more rustic; however, we’ll have to add a regular coat of poly as well because the matte is too soft for something that will see such rough use over the years.
And now for what you’re all wondering about, how much did this project cost us?
- Wood – $86
- Stain (Dark Walnut) – $7.77
- Paint (Olympic Snow Storm) – $11.97
- Polyurethane (Rustoleum Matte finish) – $11.93
- If that is all we needed to buy then our total would have been: $117.67
But my husband decided that he needed a new drill and we accidentally ruined our brushes and had to buy more, plus we were out of sand paper. We actually ended up still spending just a little over $300, which is still WAY cheaper than we would have paid for a table anywhere else.
The chairs are also new purchases, but after I sold our old table and chairs for $80 these chairs ended up only costing us $10. When the weather gets warm again I plan on spray painting them all solid white.
