DIY kitchen table.

This table isn't even set but are you as excited as I am? 

Here's our DIY farmhouse kitchen table that I mention in this post.

Let me start by explaining. 

The first weekend of March was a super sad one for us. Our little puppy, Charlie, got clipped by a car. He's okay now - but it's been a few months of his little leg recovering. The vet says in a few more months he will be golden and not even limping. Don't worry he's still playing with Charlotte (our other pup) and running after little birds. He finally got groomed.. I was too afraid to let anyone touch his legs.. and he's looking down right adorable. All of that to say every bit of money we were saving to buy a beautiful farmhouse style table on Etsy was used to pay our little Bug's vet bill. Ouch! Quite a bit. But we saved a little bit and decided to build our own. 

Firstly, my favorite blogger in the world, Naomi, posted a cute picture of her birthday last year and I saw her kitchen table in the bottom of the picture. As soon as I saw it I just had to know what kind of table it was. Turns out it was a planked farmhouse style table. I used her table and Elsie Larson's DIY Dining Table post to help us with the basics of our own. It was incredibly fun, tiring and such a learning experience. I was most happy about getting those extra hours at night building the table with Trey. This was the first big thing he's ever built and I have to say.. I was pretty impressed. Here's the journey: 

Finding the type of wood we wanted.. and here it is! Pine. 

Letting Home Depot cut each board down - that saves you time & ends

up being easier if you don't have the power tools to do it on your own. 

We planed our boards before cutting and putting them together.

It saves you hours of sanding for later down the road. 

We used wood glue & a biscuit joiner to hold our planks together.

These clamps were a life saver. We used them over night to let the wood glue dry. 

LOTS of sanding went down! Trey did it like a champ. Every night after the gym we would go over to a family friends shop and get to work on the table. This was almost every night for a few weeks (with the exception of one week because life is crazy). We were pretty busy and that was all that our schedules allowed. it was so worth it, though!

We ran into a few difficulties with the ends being uneven after we had already glued. But thank God it's wood because in that case, nearly everything is fixable! Trey used a jigsaw and evened out the edges, then on we went with more sanding!

Here's the back after staining. We tried to do as much experimenting on the back as possible just in case it wasn't our cup of tea. Turns out we loved everything we picked! This stain is called Early American and it took me 45 minutes of standing in the aisle at Home Depot to make that decision. No impulses here!

After polying the table (satin poly - same as matte that Elsie used) nine coats of poly that is, wiping it down and buffing in between coats, we did one last wipe down with a thick cloth napkin and prayed we liked the way it finished. And you know what, we did. Amateurs and all, we were super proud of our homemade table.

I'm still waiting to show you the full table for when we find the chairs we like. Right now we're just using some white ones that don't match. We want wooden ones but I'm not sure how that's going to work out just yet. Happy I finally got to share this table with you. I hope you like it. The hard work paid off because I'm currently blogging on it now and Trey's currently eating his lunch on it. Thanks for being patient with me while I got the pictures to you! 

I'm off to eat my lunch! 

Can't go wrong with pasta ;)

Ps: I forgot to mention we were under our budget for this table. 

We had a $300 budget.

Wood materials: $70

Hairpin legs (happened to be on sale $20/ea): $90 (after shipping)

& I have yet to give you chair prices because we haven't found them yet!

To build alone total: $160

In the words of Lydia James: "2 out of 3. Ain't bad"

Happy Sunday, friends.