I Did It!

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012 was to build a new table for our breakfast area. No, I've never done anything like it before, but I've been a frequent visitor to ana-white.com for a while now and kept looking at looking at plans and decided I should just go for it. Our current table was my parents' table before ours and it was in need of refinishing. Also, the chairs were falling apart. I might have tried to salvage that table (the wood is really beautiful), but it just wasn't the best shape for our breakfast area.
 I love square tables that seat 8, but most of the ones on the market are counter height (not my favorite), too big (our area is 9 foot square), or too expensive.  So when I saw the plans for the square modern farmhouse table, I was interested.  These plans were great b/c all they required were cuts at Home Depot and a drill (I also borrowed a power sander).  It took me awhile to decide what dimensions to do.  I measured our chairs and tried to figure out the smallest possible table that could seat 6 easily, but had the potential to seat 8 if needed.  I decided on a 4-foot square (ok, actually it's 47 inches, but close enough!).  I used the cut list and shopping list from her site, I just changed it to fit my dimensions.  I used eight 2x6 boards for the tabletop, but the rest are 2x4s. 
I had a great time with this table.  It's far from perfect, but I'm happy with the results overall and I'm excited to pick my next project!

Before (I had a hard time finding a good pic of our breakfast area!  Crazy!)--a nice table, but notice the "backless" chair and the fact that it's too long--those people on the ends are CLOSE to the wall

The Project:
We (Dan) purchased the wood and most of the supplies on Saturday, April 21.  I went to my Dad's for dinner on Sunday and borrowed his drill bits (including his countersink bit), sander, and some sandpaper.  

I moved the boards into the house on Monday, Apr. 23 (also my grandfather's 91st birthday) and laid them out to get an idea of how it would really come together.  

That night I attached the first 2 joists (using wood glue and 2-2 1/2 in screws per tabletop board--that means 16 screws per joist).  I marked where I needed the screws to go then I pre-drilled the 2x2 over a scrap piece of wood before doing the actual gluing and screwing.  These 2 joists took me about 2 hours and I improved a lot as I went (many of my first screws are in crooked--thankfully it doesn't matter too much for this project)

The next day (April 24) at naptime, I worked on the last 2 joists.  Here's a visual of my predrilling over a scrap board.

After I predrilled, I'd use the countersink bit over each of my holes (this makes it so the screw head doesn't stick out)

Then I'd lay down a layer of glue, get my board placed and put in all the screws.  The last 2 joists took me about 40 minutes--a pretty good improvement in just a day!

 Also during naptime on April 24, I attached the first two sideboards.  I followed the same pattern as with the joists:  mark my hold, predrill through my 2x4, use the countersink bit over each hole and finally glue and screw it to the tabletop.   I only did 4 screws on these boards initially.  Later I added a 5th screw on one of the sideboards to help minimize a gap (the boards aren't always perfectly square).

After the kids went to bed on April 24, I worked on adding the legs.  The plans said to put one screw in each leg and then stand it up to level it out, but with only one screw in, the legs were too unstable--so I had to add the second screw to get it to stand on its own.   I was SO frustrated as I put on the legs--they were supposed to have three 3-inch screws, but the 3-inch screws that we bought were too soft or something--they stripped so easily and were making me crazy.  So I just switched back to the 2 1/2 inch screws I'd used for all the other steps and things were smooth sailing again. 

It was really looking like a table at this point and I was pretty excited so I grabbed our chairs to see how they would really fit.  Wahoo!  They fit!  I put 6 placemats out also to help visualize.  

At this point, it was time to add the last sideboards and sand but it was getting late and as a result of little gaps between my tabletop boards, the sideboards I'd initially had cut were too short by 1/2 inch.  I went back to Home Depot on April 25 and got new sideboards cut.  One of them was now an 1/8th of an inch too long so I had to sand it down to get it to fit just right.  I had to remove the legs and move the table out to the garage to prepare for sanding and staining.  I attached the last 2 sideboards on April 26 after bedtime.

During naptime on April 27 I got out the wood filler and a putty knife and filled in all the gaps between boards and any other big defects I could see.

Here it is all ready to be sanded.  I spent about 2 hours on Saturday April 28 sanding it smooth.

I was ready to stain on Monday, April 30.  I first applied a wood conditioner and then waited 1/2 and hour to apply the stain.  I used Minwax stain in Ebony.  I was happy with how it was looking, but it definitely needed more coats.  Here is the first coat (April 30).  I used a rag and followed the directions on the stain.  It said to wipe off any excess stain after 15 minutes, but on my first coat, it all got soaked in--there wasn't any excess.

Coat #2 (I stained it on May 1)--I applied MUCH more liberally on this coat. 

After much deliberation, I went ahead and did a 3rd coat of stain--I'm glad I did, it really evened it out.  After 24 hours, I was ready to apply my first coat of polycrylic finish.  This is basically like mod podge (I even wonder if it's the same stuff!).  I let it dry for 2 hours and (following the directions) got ready to sand with a fine grit sandpaper before applying another coat.  *Rookie mistake--I started to sand it using the power sander--and immediately took off some of the stain.  AAH!  So I stopped, switched to handsanding and applied more stain to the board I'd scuffed.  I applied the second coat of polycrylic and then we had our crazy busy weekend.  I carefully handsanded with a fine grit sandpaper to prepare for the final coat of polycrylic.  I applied that on Monday morning (May 7).  Which meant that our table was ready to use for dinnertime on May 8!!  So I again removed all the legs, Dan helped me move it inside and I reattached the legs (using new 3 inch screws that were the same type as the other 2 1/2 inch screws).

Ta-Da!!!  I love it.  We got our 8 new chairs at Ikea (ingolf chair in brown-black).  A few notes--I can't push the chairs all the way in with 6 chairs.  It's close (close enough that I'm not too bothered by it)--another 3 inches would probably have done it.  So keep that in mind--50 inches square would probably let you push them in (but using the 2x6s as table top boards, 50 inches isn't an option--it was 47 or 52.5 and I went with 47).  Also, the polycrylic is really shiny and will probably show fingerprints.  Oh well, I'll try to keep placemats on it to minimize.  

Doesn't it look at home there though?  It's the perfect size for our space--easy to walk all the way around and we had a great dinner on it last night!

Oh yeah, the money.  So our overall cost was approx $109 plus tax.  If we hadn't gotten the wrong 3 inch screws at first, we would have saved $10.  So we'll call it $100 plus tax.  We had a $50 home depot gift card, so that brought our total out of pocket cost to about $50.  Here's the breakdown if you're interested:
Wood Filler ($8.99), bad 3" screws ($10.26), good 3" screws ($8.47), 2 1/2" screws ($8.47), wood conditioner ($5.98), sandpaper ($3.97), wood glue ($2.97), 2x2 boards ($6.54), 2x6 boards ($14.40), 2x4 boards ($9.80), Stain ($8.00), polycrylic ($16.28), felt furniture pads for the legs ($4.97)

Linking up w/Beneath My Heart's Best DIY projects of May

Linking up w/ COM Monday