Tuesday, November 15, 2011

White Faux DIY Farmhouse Table

As you all know, I like changing things up a little bit. Not too big of changes, but enough of a change to make me happy. We use to have a pub height dining table, which we still have, but was replaced by this nice farmhouse dining table when we moved into our new house. I love this table, absolutely adore it. But.... haha. You know what comes next, right? It was time for change. I've changed pretty much our whole house a couple of times, but the only constant has been the dining room. The table can sit 8 with the chairs they came with, but in reality, two bums can fit on one chair, they are huge! So, when we have more people over than anticipated, it can easily seat up to 16. The curves of the table are also glorious, and the color is beautiful....getting off track ;) ...sadly, I lost my sd card so this is the best picture I could find of it:
So, anyway. I've been drooling over beautiful rustic white dining rooms, you can check out my Pinterest board to see what I mean. Although I don't have many on there, but you get the point. I've been wanting to make a new white farmhouse table for the dining room for a year or so now, but I have no place to put the table we currently have. I don't want to paint it, it won't fit downstairs in the basement, I like it too much to part ways with it.....so....
I covered it up! Why not, right??

I used the sturdiness of the table, and just gave it- should we call it- a wooden table clothe for decoration???
Well, then my husband says....its not that bad, but it just looks like you placed wood on top of the table. ....cue me..'duh hun, thats exactly what I did.'

haha. anyway. That got me thinking. Why not make 'legs' for my faux table 'tablecloth'. Make it look like a real table???
Thats when some cardboard, a jigsaw and some leftover plywood came in handy.

I simply measured the height I needed to cover and the width I would need to cover the existing legs. Then drew an outline of a leg I thought might work on some cardboard. Cut it out, put it on the table to see if it would work. Totally didn't...so I did this about three or four times to get the right curve.
Next, I outlined the cardboard onto some plywood and then used my jigsaw to cut it out. Did this eight times.
Then painted, and simply secured to the table top. Luckily when I had made the table top I had measured a little bit longer than I needed, this was the perfect amount to add the width of the plywood snug underneath it.

I'm going through this backwards, I know. But just to cover all my bases.
To make the table top initially, I used 6' long cedar planks, measured, cut, and puzzled together the pieces to get the length and width I needed to cover the table.

I secured them with a "Z" pattern as I did on my barn door.
Next I sanded the heck out of the wood.
And then painted it a Linen White by Behr. I placed some felt on the bottom of the piece to keep it from scratching the existing table.....then when it got down to putting the piece on the table, I was feeling a little insecure about the felt and put a beach towel down on the table to give it extra scratch-proofness. You use what you can, right?
Next was to secure the overlap. I did this using a smaller width cedar plank and nail gunning it into the top piece. Easy peasy.

.....then came the husband saying that looks like wood on a table....and the aforementioned table 'legs' :)...see, we came in full circle.
I then changed out the head chairs to some white ones I got from Ikea that live in my living room. I figure that once the christmas tree makes it appearance, I'm going to have to move them somewhere anyway, so why not here? I think its a good fit.
So there you have it. this cost me $30 to do. If you ask the hubs, it was too much. But you can't find a table like this for $30 anywhere, so I see it as a good investment and a happy wife :) And when it comes down to it, and I really want to make this into a real table, I have pretty much all the pieces already.
And its getting me that much closer to a rustic but modern farmhouse look. I just need the wood beams on the ceiling ;) Then I would be happy.