How We Built Our Farmhouse Table / Wedding Guest Book

Have I mentioned lately how much I love our new dining room table?

 

Not only did we build it by ourselves but the underside of it served as the guestbook at our wedding. This table has so many memories and so much character already and it's only been completed for about a month.

 

So how did we do it? How did we build this fantastic table?

 

We loosely {repeat: loosely} followed these plans that we found on Ana White's website. It gave us most of what we wanted but we did change a few things towards the end to better suit what we wanted for our table.

 

Our project started {naturally} with a trip to Lowes to purchase the lumber needed. While we were there, we did not find the exact style of turned legs that we were looking for. They were all either made for coffee tables or were entirely too tall. We purchased ours off of Etsy {similar}

 

We followed the steps to make the table top & stopped there.

Next, Patrick sanded down the table and we laid everything out so we could start figuring out how to piece it together. Our legs were a different size than the ones in the plans so we had to do the math ourselves {ugh}





Then we stained the table together. I highly advise having two people working together on this part! Patrick would apply the stain and then I'd be right behind him wiping it up. We picked a dark stain but didn't want it going too dark because it sat on the wood too long.



We did the bottom side first to make sure we were getting the color that we wanted {& to give me practice since I had never stained anything before} and then we stained the top half. Rookie mistake: the wood glue had leaked out a little when we assembled the table top and although we wiped it up immediately, it still got into the wood a little bit which prevented the wood from absorbing the stain in some places. I think it makes the table look a little bit cooler but if you're not into that look, be careful when making the table top!

 

After staining, we moved on to the bottom half of the table. Because we wanted to easily be able to take a part / reassemble our table, we wanted to make sure that the legs could come off. Our next step was to measure out where the side and end aprons of the table should go as well as the center supports and attach via wood glue & pocket holes.

 

I'd love to tell you how that happened but I stayed out of the way while Patrick did all of the hard thinking and math work to figure out where exactly each piece should be placed.

 

Once they were attached, I painted the side & end aprons as well as the center supports SW Moderne White {same paint color we used for all of the trim/doors in our house}. We flipped the table over and applied one coat of Polyurethane to the top of the table.

 

The table then traveled to & from our reception where every got to ohh and ahh over the bottom side of the table while they signed it:

{Photos by Jessica Roberts Photography}

 

& it came back to our house. Where it sat for a good long while. Patrick did the majority of the work from here... sanding the table & applying another coat of poly {twice} and figuring out how to attach the legs so that they would be easy to take a part if when we need to move the table in the future.

 

As for me, once the legs were on the table, I went through and painted each leg twice and the end and side aprons once so each white portion of the table had two coats of paint on it.

 

And with that, our table was finally done! I could not be happier with how it turned out - Patrick made this thing look exactly as I had always envisioned it to be. Now we just need to find some chairs to put around it {since the current chairs are mixed & matched from old tables} and buy this rug to put underneath it and we'll be set.

 

So what are we going to make next? I've got a whole list of projects I'd love to build...

- a blanket ladder

- a tv stand for our Florida room

- a coffee table for our living room or maybe this one
- shelving in the garage

 

Can't wait for our next project!