DIY Kitchen Table ala Pinterest

Have you checked out Pinterest yet? I’m so hooked on all the ideas people come up with and just had to start creating a few of the ideas myself. It’s amazing what you can do when you just put your mind to it.

We started our kitchen remodel a few weeks ago and I also started to look for Dinning room tables and sets; I just couldn’t really find what I wanted or make myself pay the price they wanted. I knew what I wanted was something sturdy, fun, something that will last us forever and something that’s me… I knew Pinterest would be able to help me, at least get some ideas… and that it did.

I showed hubby a few tables that I really liked, some where coffee tables, some where islands but I knew we can mortify the tables as long as we would have some ideas…

I came across a wonderful blog from Down to Earth Style and found this cool looking table (and lots of more fun things) and fell in love with the overall design.. I talked Hubby into making me a table.. yup.. we, I mean, WE.. neither one of us has ever build any kind of furniture before and Hubby is the type that if I come up with an idea, I have to litterly talk him into it, he thinks everything is TOO HARD to do.. he rather pay someone else or just wants me to go to a furniture store and pick something out…. Well, this time I didn’t back down.. I knew it couldn’t have been that hard and I gave him a drawing of what I wanted and the picture from the website above… send him off to Lowes and OMG… follow our construction below.. you will not believe what we ended up with….

I’m sooo impressed, what Hubby created for our dinning room.. he never ever even used a saw before… and it took him only 2 afternoons including the trip to Lowes to put it together (with a little, I mean, very little help from his dad…THANK YOU).

Once he assembled our table, it was up to me to get it finished and pick the colors, stains or whatever I wanted.. I was super excited. I googled stains for days, never have I painted anything other then a wall. I had no clue what I would need, how to paint or what to expect. I read up a lot of info on Minwax.com and to my surprise, stains weren’t all that intimidating anymore.. Did you know some stains nowadays can be cleaned with water? No special cleaners, no special oil base primer etc… I had no idea…. but was so ready to get my stain and paint and go to town….

So the first few coats where on the table and I was actually going for a distressed look… which was very simple to do…. I took a sanding block and just started to sand off some of the edges.. we also have an electric band sander that we borrowed from a friend, so I used that in some places as well; I know you can use a lot of different items to make furniture look distressed like beat it up with chains, scrape off some wood chunks etc… but this worked for me and was super easy to do on a Saturday…

Now check out what it looks like after I “distressed” my brand new table…..

I rubbed some Dark walnut stain on the exposed wood, the one I sanded the color off to make it look “old”… I just used an old T-shirt and my fingers and rubbed it all over the “bare” spots…. this is what the outcome was…. Now, if you want to distress more… go right ahead… I was done for the day :0)….

Tip about Oil Base Paint on Hands:
If you know Oil Base paint can be a pain to clean off hands and skin.. I found a great and simple solution to clean off my stains from my hands… once I was done I poured some Vegetable Oil on my hands and also added some regular table salt to my hands and scrubbed away for a few minutes… Voila.. Oil Stain is off my hands and nails and my fingers are soft and smooth as well… !!!! You have to try it to believe it…. It worked beautifully!!

Now we added a few extra touches to our table.. I soo wanted to add some of the Iron brackets.. like I found on yup.. Pinterest..lol

However, I did not like the price.. anywhere from $30 and up a piece…. Almost more then what my entire table was.. I had to find something in my price range… ahhhmmm under $10 or so, maybe…. and I did.. at Hobby Lobby! Yup, to my surprise I found 2 of these amazing brackets for $5 each.. I did the happy dance when I found them and couldn’t wait to go home and attach them to the table…. It really gave the table a finished and customized look….. and the best part… We didn’t spend an arm and a leg on our dinning table… the entire thing was a little under $100 for everything and 2 afternoons to build and one Saturday to paint….. this table is solid you can dance on it, will last our family for many many, many years and can always be changed to my likes… LOVE it!!!

Oh, I also added some felt to the bottom of the table, now it slides across our Laminate Floor like a piece of paper… super easy… have I told you, I LOVE MY Table….

How do you like it?? Was super easy, wasn’t it? If we can do it.. anyone can do it… Happy Building….