Tuesday was hubby’s day off, and he graciously spent the entire afternoon, all the way into the night building and assembling the table. He’s so amazing! Love, love him! (not just because of that, either.
)If you remember, we had the legs cut and the top of the pallet all sanded….
Hubby added some cross-beams to stabilize the legs and give him something to bolt them into. (the lighter wood)
Here is a closer look:
Then he bolted the legs to the undersides of the pallet. I am so glad Hubby did this part, because he is smart and thought to make sure that each leg was equally level before he bolted them in. I definitely would not have thought of that, and probably would’ve ended up with a very wobbly table!
The kids had fun “helping” Dad build the table.
See the green level on the top of the table leg? Yep. Smart.
We turned the table over…
And it was way too tall! Like, 5 inches taller than we’d wanted. If we tried to eat on it, we’d be having our dinner at about shoulder level, which would be kind hard, don’t you think? Remember when I said I’d rather have a tall table than a too short table? I would, but this is a little bit too tall.
Eliana and I look so small sitting here!!
Obviously, we had to trim down the height a little.
I think we ended up taking four and a half inches off the length, which made things much better.
Now it looks like a regular table!
We decided to fill in these holes on the end, to give the table a more finished look. I forgot to take pictures though, because it was dark and the mosquitos were biting like crazy. Hubby cut some 1x4’s to fit in the holes, and nailed them into the gaps, putting the nails on the underside of the table. It looks really nice!
The next step was to sand it a little more, then go pick out stain to make it look nice and finished. Off to Lowe’s we went this morning , after breakfast. We chose a dark stain since the wood is a couple of different kinds, to unify the table and hide some of the un-evenness.
Kona- mmm. Makes me want some coffee!
Here are the first few brush-strokes…Its really dark!
And almost through staining…
Thankfully we put cardboard down under the table so that we wouldn’t end up with a stained driveway.
A word to the wise: wear long sleeves and gloves when staining furniture..and maybe even a mask. The fumes are strong and if you’re not covered, you very well may end up looking like you have about ten thousand freckles in whatever color stain you chose…kind of like I do right now.
I should have known better, because I tend to be a messy painter in general, but I also tend to err on the carefree; throw caution to the wind side as well. When painting/staining, this can be an undesirable quality! 
My arms, chest and face looked like this too, as well as my feet. Oops. Thankfully I was able to get it off of my face. The rest will come off eventually.
At least, since I was outside, I didn’t get a headache from the fumes like I did when I repainted our front and back doors!
We’re going to put polyurethane on the table as well, to protect the wood from the inevitable spilling of food it's going to encounter being our dining room table. By the time I was finished staining the table this morning, it was already 90 degrees, so I called it quits. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow morning we will go ahead and poly it and then bring her inside for Part 3 - the big reveal!!
What do you think so far??
I like it.
(Disclaimer: I do not get any compensation for promoting either Lowe's or Rust-Oleum, we just love our local home improvement store and the products they carry!)
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