Look what we made!

A while back, I came across a link that changed my life... or at least my kitchen. Knock-Off Wood is a super-popular site where Ana, the blogger, provides plans & inspiration to build your own Pottery Barn (& etc.) style furniture for a fraction of the cost...and then you get to make it the color you want (if you and your significant other are fortunate enough to be able to agree on a color...) and modify it as needed (if you think ahead and wonder HOW on earth a 92" long table is going to fit in the kitchen...or through the front door.) and, most importantly, you get to love it and bat your eyes at it and hug it and take an extraordinary amount of pride in it because... it's YOURS. YOU made it! Not the Pottery Barn elves.

So, I've been totally stalking this website. Drawing diagrams of each room in my house and trying to figure out how I can incorporate one of Ana's projects around every corner.  It didn't take much convincing (in fact, it only took the idea of getting some fancy schmancy power tools) to get David on board. And once I realized that I had a willing partner, I made my list.

My lists are SCARY. Let's just say that this weekend, we accomplished 1/63rd of the list. *blush*
(but it was a big 63rd...a 38.5" x 92.25" 63rd, to be exact)

We used Ana's plans to make a Farmhouse Table a la Restoration Hardware. And we made it our very own. (We kind of didn't have a choice). And we made it for WAY less than $2725. (Although, admittedly, we spent quite a bit more than the $10 Ana managed to do it for!) In fact, we spent WAY less than $2725 (+shipping... and + all the headaches and frustration trying to get the darn thing shipped to an APO would cause!) and got the table AND the power tools out of the deal!  We were aware that wood in England would cost significantly more than wood in the good ol' US of A. And it did. We were pleasantly surprised, though, when our ticket got totaled up... the wood ended up costing us $168. Still not too bad... the cheapest rectangular table at Pottery Barn is $699...and two and a half feet shorter than our table. Even a table 22 inches shorter from Ikea (I like Ikea, but I think it's safe to say their furniture isn't the sturdiest...), would have cost $200. And you can't even argue that we spent lots of time on the table... just about 2 more hours than a trip to Ikea (2 hours in the car, 2 hours in the store, 2 hours coming home). And... we MADE it! All by ourselves!

British 2x4s aren't actually 2x4. I'm SO confused... when you buy wood, you buy in meters, or millimeters or something. But when you buy nails, you buy in inches. Huh? Why not just stick with one? And why not have it be inches so I know what I'm talking about?? So, David and I are following the plans and then I get antsy. I want to see what the table is going to LOOK like. Because I'm easily excitable when it comes to this sort of thing. So before we screwed the legs together, I decided to show David what our table legs were going to look like when they were all put together. This is one time when antsiness REALLY paid off... because we realized that cutting 3.5" notches for a 2x4 to fit in weren't going to work with British 4x2s, which are really... I don't know... BIGGER than a 2x4. I'll have to measure one tomorrow!

Anyway, the important thing is that the difference in that measurement made EVERYTHING different... lots of extra cutting that we weren't counting on. Including David cutting one looooooooong straight line down an 81" piece of lumber. It was scary! I got yelled at for squealing. I was just so nervous though!

Another little setback when we realized that the 4" wood screws we bought were flat not Phillips. This was a problem because we didn't have a flat bit. So we went to the hardware store. The very very overpriced hardware store. And there, David realized that he DID have a flat bit. But just in case, we bought some Phillips head screws. Then we went back home and David got all sweaty. Screwing the looong screws in was definitely the most intense portion of the building. The Phillips screws weren't going in properly (I think the bit wasn't the right size for them? or maybe the threading on them wasn't right for the wood?) but the flat were too hard to keep on the bit without a "sleeve". (Hardware store didn't have one). Finally David got all the screws sunk, but we hope nobody inspects the inner underside corners of our table. Because it's not pretty under there.

But you know where it IS pretty?  Everywhere else!

Tomorrow, we stain it... and add a little special something that I thought of all by myself. I am, after all, the brains in this operation.

And then... we attempt to get it through the door.