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.

Chairs and rug from Amazon. 

A closeup of the beginnings of our gallery wall. Still a work in progress.

I am in love with this stain. Minwax Special Walnut.

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DIY | Pintering

DIY Mint Chocolate Chip Desk Tutorial

One of my goals for 2013 that I made for myself in my head was to do more. By January 5th,  exercise quickly went the way of the dinosaurs, as did cooking. Enter Pinterest. (verb: "Pintering" coined by Mike Davis). So I found a great desk on Pinterest via the talented Jenserafini. It's gorgeous. I loved everything about it. And I thought: "I could do that. A trip to Home Depot and we'll have this done in a Saturday." Possibly the most naive statement I've made in my life.

When all was said and done we tallied four trips to Home Depot, three to four weekends, a couple more Monday family nights, one potential emergency room visit, and around $130. So, if you think this description fits you-- Read on!

We started our adventure by driving up to Park City to pick up some super cheap bookshelves we found on KSL (Utah's craigslist). Yes the gas made the bookshelves probably not worth the drive, but I got an outlet shopping trip out of it, so we'll call it a draw.

 Here's the haul from our first Home Depot trip. Here are the basics we used: wood (common board), wood glue, wood filler (not stainable-despite what the packaging says), wood stain, polyurethane finish, primer, paint, and lots and lots of sandpaper!

After a few measuring difficulties resulting in repeating our purchase of wood 2.5 times, and hours and hours of drying, we were ready to sand. Shout out to... my entire family for helping out. You guys were great employees. I'm sorry I won't be paying you.

Look how happy they are! (This is obviously fairly early in the process.)

Next step was to stain the table top. We did three to four coats of Minwax's Dark Walnut stain. A little DIY tip for those of you in winter weather: stain, primer, and paint need to be at a fairly high temperature to work well. So, probably don't attempt this project in the middle of a freezing Utah February. Also, outside working conditions during that time of the year are not ideal. Lesson learned. 

Once our table was dark chocolate stained, we started working on the bookshelves. I thought the worst was over, but I was, once again, mistaken. DIY really shouldn't be my thing. Oh well.

We sanded, primed, and painted each bookshelf. I chose a muted mint color for the shelves that I may regret in a couple years, but for now I love it!

And this is the portion of the post that I debated about whether or not to include. However, I decided that people might get a smile out of it, so hopefully my struggles were worth it. 

Top: I got primer in my eye. And my husband made me sit under the sink for 10 minutes until he was sure that the paint was out. Don't ask me how I did it. Its just one of those things. 

Bottom: Immediately after getting primer in my eye, I spilled half the can of primer all over the floor. I wish I could say that it was because of impaired vision... but I can't. That was all Brittany.

Overall, we did two coats of primer and two coats of paint. FYI - I got my act together after the 2nd coat of primer.

Here are the before and after of our $5 bookshelves. Better, right?

After putting a polyurethane top coat on the desktop, we were done! We let the wood sit for around 72 hours just to make sure that the top coat was set and we weren't going to get fingerprints, dents, etc on the desk. Didn't turn out too bad huh? It is like 1,000% better than I was expecting when we started this little endeavor. The desk is definitely not perfect. When I'm showing it off, I'll probably try to do it in dim lighting (and from a distance). We are clearly beginners. But I'm pretty excited with how it turned out.

Well I hope you enjoyed our little tutorial. Sorry it isn't a perfect step-by-step, but if you have questions on specifics, I'd love to share our experience! We had a lot of fun making it! I'd love to see pictures/links to your DIY projects. I'm ready to put my husband back to work :)

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DIY | Pintering