DIY farmhouse table - part two

{sorry that part two has taken me so long to post :(  right now 95 percent of my time is being spent in west virginia with my family for certain reasons -but i will get the finished product up here as soon as possible. thanks for all the calls, texts and emails... means the world.}


here is where the hard part began... the top and finishing.
yes, cutting the wood to the exact measurements can be nerve racking, but staining the table is the final straw. we chose to use english chestnut by minwax and started with the base of the table.

then we put together the table top. we went with 2x10 and 2x12 planks, using two of each. we used the kreg jig to attach the boards together on the underside of the tabletop.

the table top wasn't perfectly even - and i wanted it to be smooth enough to slide a plate across! david went and bought a hand planer and used that to even out all the top boards. it did exactly the job we needed - and after completely wearing our arms out our table was perfectly smooth! we cut the breadboard ends and attached those to complete the tabletop.

table DONE! atleast the building part...

here is what we did with EVERY SINGLE BOARD to prepare the stain.
when the wood was cut to it's measurement we would sand with 100 grit sandpaper using a belt sander.
then i would sand again with my palm sander using 220 grit sandpaper. this gives a super smooth finish.
then you stain.
then you sand again with 220.
then you stain.
EVERY. SINGLE. BOARD. (and there are a lot of boards!)

we put the tabletop on saw horses to stain -

so the tabletop was sanded and stained and sanded and stained - and then it was finished! (even though we still have a boatload to do...)

and there she is sitting out in the sun to dry. the stain seriously soaked into the wood and ended up being much more on the mahogany side than we expected. we are doing two coats of gloss poly then finishing with two more coats of satin poly, so that will also make the color change a bit.

until next time :)