I will do my best to restrain my over-the-top excitement about this for your sake, but the plain and simple truth is that I LOVE THIS TABLE. I really, really love this table. I walk into the kitchen, even when I don't have to, just to look at this table and be reminded that it's here. I'm inspired to make every single snack an elaborate full-family sit-down affair so that we can sit around it. You get the idea. Love.
This would be our new table, built by Steve (the man who claims he doesn't know how to build things. Yeah, that guy). With a self-imposed deadline (who can work without a deadline?) of Thanksgiving Day, our dinner guests arrived and were directed not to the kitchen (where I was cooking with a baby on my back and four children underfoot for the sake of getting.the.table.done!), but to the workshop, where this table was still being constructed. Oh yes.
At 1pm, it was brought into the kitchen at just the moment I pulled our turkey out of the oven. Final assembly happened, with a table-setting crew following closely behind. (With final staining saved for later that night.) There's nothing like a little deadline to keep things exciting, get the blood pumping, and get something done, now is there?
It was modeled a bit after this table, with modified plans from here. We stained the table top with a few clear coats of Vermont Natural Coatings. The apron and legs were built with rough-cut 2x4's, while the top boards and the bottom foot board came from an old barn of some friends.
It's everything I hoped it would be and asked for - simple, sturdy, made out of something old, and big enough for a crowd (it's nine feet long), but not so big that the seven of us can't sit comfortably and closely. But what I love just as much as all of that, is the way this man, who certainly never grew up building things, just dove on in and gave it a go one step at a time (with at least one child underfoot at all times). That inspires me, and I dare say, I think he totally rocked this project.
The old barn boards on top are full of grooves and knots and twists and axe marks and oh-so-much character and history. Each time I sit down at it, I imagine the past of this wood, while dreaming about the future stories yet to come around this table. And oh, the right now is very good too. It's lovely.
