The tale of the table.

So, some of you may have heard the long and involved tale of the table I asked for. If not, the short version is that neighbors had a similar style table that I fell in love with:

I thought it would be perfect for behind our couch for added seating, a place for the kids to eat snacks while watching TV, space for party hosting, etc. So I asked Tom to “throw one together” with the thought that it only needed to last until we moved because I didn’t want to move another big piece of furniture. That was March 27 (I know because that’s the date of the above picture).

Well, if you know Tom, he can’t simply “throw something together” when it comes to anything woodworking. 😂 So he started looking for plans, searching Pinterest, and watching YouTube videos. The time slipped by and weeks passed and I still didn’t have my table…but he was working on it! (To be fair, he doesn’t have a lot of time for projects like this so it was some weeknights and weekends only.) I kept giving him grief because I literally wanted a two-hour table and it was turning into a two-month table.

I did catch glimpses of it now and again and I knew it was going to be neat—he was using wood from various parts of my life, including wood strips from my mom’s basement and wood strips from a dresser my Grandma passed down to my dad and then to me (that finally broke apart during one of our moves)—he was cutting everything into pieces and then gluing them all together. I joked that this table was going to be a family heirloom that Katie‘s grandchildren would enjoy someday.

But it was seeming to take forever and I was growing anxious. After all, we’d already moved pieces around to make room for it—but it wasn’t there—so junk started filling the area and it looked bad.

And time passed. And since the table top had been stored in the garage and it was summer and humid, it warped…which necessitated more time to fix it. And then finally…it was done! Just in time for our back-to-school party on August 17 (or our anniversary on August 18—take your pick!). Tom was literally putting the last coats of sealant on it that morning…bu we were crazy busy so I didn’t even get any photos. That said, these were the legs (which had been painted gray). You’ll notice they are Hs. 🙂

We’d been casually looking for stools for months (we had two we could use but really wanted four) and by chance we found some on NextDoor and picked them up the morning after the party. We had measured the height to make sure they fit…but neither of us thought to ask about the width. I bet you can see where I’m going with this. Yep, two stools together were just a little bit too wide and didn’t fit underneath the table…DAMMIT!! The stools were really perfect and they were an amazing deal…so we ended up changing out the legs which gave us just enough room for the stools. Of course this took more time (but thankfully not too much more).

AND NOW IT’S DONE. AND IT’S PERFECT. AND GORGEOUS. AND I FREAKING LOVE IT.

Tom is simply amazing and I can’t wait to see this in our forever house (and Katie’s forever house 😂). And I can’t wait to see what treasures he builds when he actually gets a real workshop someday…

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