In 2009 at Thanksgiving we were set to have a few people over when I had a sudden panic attack because I realized I had no place for anyone to sit and eat. We had a table that was fine, but the chairs to that table seemed to fall apart on a regular basis. Stephen had repaired them several times but it never failed a couple weeks later they would fall apart again. Not to mention that the kids where constantly dragging the chairs to their bedrooms for some unknown reason. So out of pure necessity we drug the picnic table in from outside. I cleaned it up and put table clothes on it. We missed having a picnic table outside but this was the perfect solution to the constantly breaking and always missing kitchen chairs. Eventually we purchased a picnic table for the kitchen and returned our outside table back to the barbecue area. The plan was to sand and stain the table right away, however that didn't happen because it was Easter or some other holiday and the table was placed in the kitchen the night before we were having people over. With procrastination being our number one asset we simply never got around to staining the table. As well when we bought the table it wasn't the season for summer goods, so we bought the last table that Home Depot had and some of the boards seemed a bit warped. We seemed to constantly be cleaning the table, but unstained wood seems to never look clean to me. Not only that, but Katie is going through this stage where she wants to draw all the time, I spend about half of my weekends helping Katie scrub her drawings off the walls and everything else she can find to draw on, even the TV screen and her body, oh man her body is the worst. She constantly finds Sharpe markers from who knows where and draws on her body head to toe so quickly that most of the time I see her clean then drawn all over and I never see the actual act of drawing ( she is the same with scissors and her hair!) This is what the table looked like yesterday when I started:
Yesterday I got all caught up on the sanding and staining of Shelby's bed and was waiting for the next piece, standing there with the sander in hand I kept looking at the table thinking how badly it needed to be sorted. I found myself sanding the table in between sanding and staining the bed. I had enough left over stain that I eventually got around to staining the table as well. This morning Stephen helped me turn the table upside down so that I could finish staining the legs. We noticed right away that the warped boards could easily be fixed. The table is put together with screws, except the support pieces, those had been put on with nails, which had pulled out and allowed the boards to warp. Stephen put some screws into all the support bars and wow all the boards are now level! Here is the odd part that we noticed yesterday and it has me puzzled. We purchased 3 inch wood screws, and every board that we purchased, and all the boards on the table are all 2 inch boards, it would stand to reason that if your screwing two 2 inch boards together with 3 inch screws then there should be an inch of wood between the end of the screw and the other side of the boards, however on the bed and on the table the screws came through to the other side ? This led to Stephen then having to grind off the excess portion of the screws. I have attempted a few times to capture the sparks that fly from the grinder. Today I got a pretty good shot of this.
I am not completely finished with the table, the stain we bought had polyurethane in it, however after I stained the table I re-sanded it. I wanted the grains in the table to show and that wasn't happening with this particular wood and the black stain. I am about to send Sara and Luke to Lowe's to buy a small can of polyurethane to finish the table off, but for now it looks like this: (be sure and ignore all the saw dust and junk on the floor under the table lol)
Ok so an update, I added two coats of Polyurethane, tomorrow I will lightly sand the table and add another coat of Polyurethane, the plan is to have a nice shine to it when I am done....
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