Building a modern farmhouse dining table

 So it's no surprise that me and my hubby jumped the build your own farmhouse table band wagon since everyone else in blog land is doing it.

 Like a lot of people we used ana-white.com for free easy awesome plans.  I am now highly addicted to Ana's website, I want to build everything in our house from scratch but Lou would kill me so instead I'm opting for some smaller projects here and there like a coffee table, desk and maybe even a media stand.  Anyways enough about that and now for the details on our table.  We used to have a smaller table with 4 chairs that felt too bulky for our small eat in kitchen which is our only eating space in our home.  So we put that baby on craigslist and used the funds to buy the supplies for our new table. 

  We are in love with our new table and a little obsessed.  We are also very proud of ourselves for building our own super sturdy, awesome, incredibly beautiful, obsessively gorgeous, makes me wanna clean it everyday modern family farmhouse dining table (did I tell you I was a little obsessed, well I meant a lot obsessed).  We used the shopping and cutting list provided in Ana's website and then followed the instructions.

 We bought and use a mini hand held Kreg jig for the first time in our lives and we love that little guy he's so easy to use and it's nice when people come over and ask where are the 100 plus screws that we used?

 We Kreg jigged the table top 2x6's together from the bottom so you won't see all the screws.

Next we built the frame with 2x2's screwed from the inside of the table into the 2x6 legs for the inside supports. Then we used 2x4's for the aprons, the long side aprons are screwed from the out side of the 2x6 legs  into the 2x4's and the smaller side aprons are screwed from the inside 2x2 support into the 2x4.

Then we screwed in all the 2x2 support slats with Kreg jig screws into the side aprons.

Finally we were able to put the table top into the frame which was super tight and almost impossible but we got'er in, and screwed each 2x2 into the 2x6 table top from the bottom up.  We then sanded the whole table but I don't have any pictures of that part of the process we were too busy taping and covering the whole kitchen with plastic.  We started with 60 grit rough sanding paper, then worked our way to 180 grit medium sand paper and all the way down to 220 grit fine sanding paper.

We finished the table with wood conditioner, one thick coat of Rustoleum's Dark Kona stain applied with cheapo foam brushes.  We let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes and wiped out the excess with a cheese cloth.  We used  3 coats of Minwax water based polycrylic in satin finish for the top coat. And that's it.  She's a beauty.

And here she is with the chairs we bought off of good ole craigslist for $10.  The chairs are waiting to be painted, I'm thinking glossy white or some other bright pop of color, not sure yet but I'll keep you posted whenever I decide to do that.

 

I'm in love, it's not perfect but it's not supposed to be and we love it too pieces. I know it looks too big in the pictures but there's more that 3 feet of walk space all around it.  It's bigger that our old table but the smaller chairs really help big time making it feel alot more spacious than before.  It's been about 4 months since we built it and we couldn't be happier with our table, we are enamored with it.