Cindy & Bryan's Wood Shop
Dining Room Table
The dining room table was the first idea we had. We shopped around for dining room tables, but had no desire to spend thousands of dollars for one we liked. That's when Cindy came up with the grand idea of building one ourselves.
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We downloaded plans from Anna White's website and took them to our local lumber yard. The employees there were more than happy to help us and took the plans and cut most of the boards to size which saved us a lot of work.
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We went with the pocket hole method for joining the pieces, which worked out well ... and went on to finishing
The table is built out of pine which is a fairly soft wood. We sanded the sides and top and then stained the table. The top soaked in the stain and it became blotchy and looked terrible. We must have either sanded the table too rough or not enough, either way, we had to figure out how to fix it.
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We brought the top back into the garage and started sanding again. The stain soaked pretty deep, but we managed to sand most of it off.
We reapplied to stain and it turned out great. The grain showed perfectly and the blotching was gone.
There was some swirling left behind by the sander, but we could live with that. We must have been applying too much pressure. We have a random orbit sander that is designed to prevent swirling, but we really dug it in instead of letting the tool do the work for us ... lesson learned!
The table is 7 feet long and 3 feet wide, but we wanted the option to extend it if needed so we decided to install leaves. Each extension adds 15 inches. We decided it would be easiest to add the extensions to the ends of the table. We notched out two holes in the skirt and used 2x2 pine boards as the supports which worked well, but we then had to figure out how to secure them to the table
We couldn't find pre-made brackets that would best fit our needs, and we didn't have the tools to make our own, so we removed the sides off of electrical boxes and used those. Turns out they fit perfectly and allowed for some play side to side. We added screws to the back of the 2x2 runners to prevent the runners from being pulled out. It doesn't look the greatest, but it works and no one will see it anyway.
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The runners were in place, now we had to figure out how to attach the extensions.
We laid the extension on the runners and drew our lines. We used 3 blocks to create a snug fit and used sliding locks to secure the board to the runners. We also added to blocks at the end to prevent the extension from flipping up if someone put too much pressure on the end of it.
Overall, the assembly was a bit crude, but they work well and have come in handy when we need a little extra room. Each extension is marked with their own letter so we know which side goes where.
The table gave us a few challenges, but we learned a lot in the process. The swirls in the finish is a bit annoying, but they serve as a reminder of how far we have come. The table is used nearly every day and the top is easily removed and replaced if it does suffer too much damage ... but I we will need to do that anytime soon.