The Fosses: Our new kitchen table

This is Alex writing. Yes, I’m hijacking the blog again. It’s fun to do. Anyways, I just finished building a kitchen table for Dawn. I wanted to build it for her anyways, but I used it to convince her that buying my expensive tools would be worth it. Purchasing this table would be around 2500 dollars.

So 3 years ago I promised her a table. About a year after that I bought the table legs and the wood for the table. The wood sat in my garage for nearly 2 years while I ignored it. Finally, this last May, I decided to fulfill my promise and give her the table she deserves.

Once I set about bringing everything together I discovered that I didn’t have enough wood to get the width of table I needed, nor could I find wood of the same color (That’s really important in furniture.) So, I bought all new boards for the top which was a bit expensive considering I had already bought the boards for it.

So, I then went about assembling the pieces for the base. It didn’t take very long to do. I put the finish on the boards before I glued them together which saved a lot of work and headaches. It turned out beautiful too. Very smooth. Four coats of water based polycrylic finish. The finish doesn’t have a nasty odor either so I was able to do it inside without expelling anyone from the house.

I finished the base and glued up the first try of the top just before all the relatives arrived for Tyler’s baby blessing. Unfortunately the top had a nasty cup in it, so my friend Cy helped me to cut it back up, prepare the sides to be glued, and helped me glue it in about 4 hours.

After regluing it I tapered the underside to 1/2” thick at the edge and put a subtle curve on each side. I finished the top with 5 coats of polycrylic which took the better part of 2 days. I buffed the last coat with 0000 steel wool.

I’m really glad I finished. There aren’t many things that can compare with the feeling of finishing a project of this length or magnitude.