Farmhouse
Table Materials List:
5- 8’ 2x8’s
less than $6/each at Lowe’s)
4-pre-made
legs of your choice (mine were $15/each at Lowe’s) or you can use 4x4’s, just
make sure you are not using any treated lumber
3 or 4
(depending on length of your table)-8’ 1x4’s (we used 1x6’s which you can use,
but it makes a tight fit for legs if you are using standard dining chairs)
2- 8’ 1X4’s
for underneath table support
L brackets
Screws
Dark
Walnut Stain
Paint (I
used Color Place Antique White satin because I had it sitting in my basement)
Latex gloves, dust masks, brushes, and at least a case of beer
I have
been oooing and ahhing over farmhouse tables for months now. I love to watch
Fixer Upper and My Big Family Renovation on HGTV and and they always feature
farmhouse design. It’s the “in” thing right now and rightly so. It’s awesome! It’s
warm and inviting like primitive and
country design, but it’s light and airy with a more updated vibe.
My dining
table was bought several years ago and was counter height. Counter height is
awesome and I loved it while we had it, but I have just been itching to get a
regular height dining table. After pinning and pinning and pinning some more
and researching and reading tutorials online, my husband agreed to build me a
farmhouse table. He’s a super handy guy, so I had complete faith in him pulling
this off.
My
daughter and I took off to Lowe’s last weekend and started loading up
materials. I took that opportunity to go
all liberated woman on her and tell her how girls can do anything that boys can
do and nothing was going to hold us back and we were going to rock this thing
out and on and on and on. And then I realized I couldn’t get the 2x8’s down
from the top shelf by myself so I had to ask a man for help. Ha! We won’t be
burning our bras just yet I suppose.
He cut the
five 2x8’s down to 64 inch length and then we sanded and sanded and sanded and
sanded some more until they were nice and smooth. After they were sanded, I stained the boards
with Minwax Dark Walnut stain. I used a brush to brush the stain on and I set a
timer for ten minutes and then wiped the boards down with a rag. After that was
done, we waited several hours for the stain to dry and then back to the sander
to age those bad boys. Lots of sanding around the edges to really make them
look worn since the look you are going for is old barn wood. After the second sanding, we applied Johnson's paste wax until it formed a haze and then buffed.
 |
| Here you can see how the wood went from lumber yard to beautiful with stain and sanding! |
Ok, after
that, I came inside because it was colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra
outside, so the details on the next part are a little sketchy to me, but I do
have some pics, so hopefully if you are handy enough to be building this table,
you can figure out what he did next.
We decided
on how we would lay the boards and he laid them side by side and used 1x4’s to
go across the backs. Pre-drill your holes in EVERY.SINGLE.THING you screw in
during this project. You do NOT want to spend hours and hours and hours
staining and sanding and staining and sanding and then have your wood split. That
would suck royally.
 |
| Here are the boards for the tabletop laying across our old dining table before we screwed them together. And by we, I totally mean he.  Underneath the table. You can see the 1x4's used underneath. |
After the
supports were screwed into the back, it was time to attach the legs. And I
forgot this on the materials list because I was at church when he went and got
this GENIUS redneck-fabulous solution to attaching the legs. A normal person who lived someplace where
there is an actual hardware store open on Sundays would go and get lag screws
and drill in the leg and attach into the tabletop. MY husband went to the only
place open in Covington , VA
Oh and he added those corner braces with scrap wood.
Once all the legs and
aprons were attached, we flipped the table over
then it was my turn to
shine! I had been debating on what color
to paint the base of the table. Shoot, I
had been debating on what MATERIAL to use on the base of the table. I had been
thinking of using metal because I think the rustic and industrial are
AMAZEBALLS together. But I stuck with more traditional french countryside and
did the wood legs and decided to paint the base white, mostly for neutrality. I
painted two coats of plain ole cheap, grab and go Color Place Antique White
satin paint from Walmart (because it’s what I had in my basement.)
Normal people would let that dry overnight and
then sand. I let it dry a couple hours (30 minutes maybe) and started sanding around the edges and
just random places to get a distressed finish. You can distress furniture in a
bunch of different ways (google it) but I’ve found just plain ole sandpaper to be my go-to
way. I sanded and then I realized I was
sanding bare wood, not something that was finished and I was just spicing up. Duh.
Here’s your sign. So then I was like…uh. What am I going to do now? See, I
wanted nice dark marks to come through when I sanded, but because the wood was
bare, I was getting bare wood marks when I sanded (ugly and not visible.) So then I had to figure out what to do next. I
got my Minwax dark walnut stain and I began rubbing it on the places where I
had been sanding and then rubbing it off quickly. That began to darken things
up the way I wanted them.
This was a tedious
process which could’ve been completely avoided by just painting the base a dark
brown before I did the white. I did all
of that and stood back and still wasn’t crazy about it, so then I decided to
try one more thing before I chopped the entire thing up for firewood. I got a few rags and I dipped my rag into the
stain and I rubbed it onto the white paint (as you would a glaze I think? I’ve
never used a glaze!) I rubbed it on and
then very quickly (like as soon as I got it on) rubbed it off with my clean
rag. I did that process to the entire
base of the table and it was THEN that I finally decided I loved it and wouldn’t
be having a bonfire tonight.
Our first dinner at our new table!
Today husband built one bench using 2-2x8's and the sides are precut 1'x 3' pine boards (kids are sitting on)
I still have to finish painting it.
We're going to do benches on the long sides and metal chairs on each end after the snowstorm passes.
We will have the table and two benches done for around $200 (I think! I stink at math!)
Hope this inspires you to farmhouse out something in your house! You can do it!
-lightningbug
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