DIY Dining Room Table

When we picked up and moved across the country for dental school, we left our awful little college apartment dining set behind. It. was. bad. It was one of those small, square ones where if you had four people sitting there you were all awkwardly playing footsy with each other. So when we moved to our new place in Florida, we decided we needed to upgrade. However, anyone who knows me well knows that I tend to have trouble making a decision. So we spent a few weeks eating on our kitchen floor while I was deciding what I wanted... Suuuuper great memory. But not something we wanted to continue for the long-term. I searched long and hard, but I couldn't find anything that I liked (oh, unless I was allowed to spend $2,000 -- which I was not). After our desk tutorial a little while back, I was feeling ready to conquer the world. So, with only a sander and some wood stain, I decided that we were going to give the DIY thing another try. I started (as always) by doing my Pinterest research. After finding a wonderful tutorial on A Beautiful Mess, I was in love. And that was the table we were making. And Mike had to figure out to make it happen. Marriage is the best.

We went to Home Depot and bought six wood planks. We used pine because that is what the guy at Home Depot told us to use. Honestly though, he could have told us anything and we would have believed him. We are very novice DIY-ers. But it ended up working out pretty well. No complaints so far. Thanks guy at Home Depot!

So after picking out the straightest six boards we could find (I recommend testing them all out right there in the wood aisle smack in the middle of the store), we went and got a few long pieces of wood for the table frame/border and the structural support underneath. We got those few pieces cut to the dimensions that Mike had measured and we were set! We picked up a can of special walnut stain and a can of polyurethane on our way out, and we were on our way.

We used only screws to keep everything together, no glue. After screwing all of the boards and frame pieces together, we sanded for a million years. And then we proceeded to put on literally a million layers of stain and polyurethane. We did all of this in our garage. A little ghetto? Yes. But we were able to get the job done. We ordered the legs from hairpinlegs.com, screwed them in and viola! We had ourselves a table.