Narrow Farmhouse table

After discovering Ana White over a year ago, we knew that we wanted to build ourselves a dining room table. It was just a matter of finding the right plan for our house and family. The Narrow Farmhouse table was just perfect! We shortened the length to 6' to fit into our combined living dining area. I would love to have the 8' version some day, maybe when we have 2 separate eating areas?!

A note on our wood choices, I would try hard to use pine in lieu of whitewood for ALL the table components. The pine did a much better job with the stain and poly then the whitewood. As I have seen the one other time I tried to work with whitewood, it's CRAZY soft and I suppose I'm just not a big fan. I would take the trade off of more sanding with pine to insane finish silliness, any day!

Built from Plan(s)

Narrow Farmhouse Table

Estimated Cost

$100, mostly because we moved this summer and had to buy stain & poly again. The wood cost was about $60 and we already had the pine scraps for the legs.

Estimated Time Investment

Day Project (6-9 Hours)

Finish Used

Minwax Dark Walnut with both Minwax Wipe On Polyuretane and Minwax Polycrylic. I am not usually aiming for a shiny, glossy finish so Wipe On Poly is my go-to finish. However, for this project, the Whitewood just soaked up the Wipe On Poly and the tabletop was not sufficiently smooth. So I bought a tiny jar of Polycrylic. I may just be converted, at least for tabletop surfaces, because the finish is now just beautiful.

Recommended Skill Level

Beginner

Comments

Guest (not verified)

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 13:25

LOVE! This is seriously, down

LOVE! This is seriously, down to the exact chairs, what I am planning in our dining room. You have great taste!

Guest (not verified)

Tue, 08/23/2011 - 16:49

Looks good! I've found that

Looks good!

I've found that if you put a conditioner on first, the soft woods take the stains more evenly and don't soak up the stain so readily. Minwax makes one for both oil and water-based stains.

rhilborn

Tue, 08/23/2011 - 16:58

Wood conditioner

I actually used a wood conditioner from Minwax and yet the stain still had a struggle. I did not use the wood conditioner on the pine on the legs and they had no problem. Thanks for the tip though!