One fish, two fish...: The never-ending project...that is over!

Back when we lived in South Jordan, my friend Shelli Dame took me to Gardner Villlage one day. We went into a few furniture stores where I fell in love with a farmhouse table. It looked similar to this Pottery Barn table.

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/sumner-dining-table-set/?pkey=cdining-sets-tables

Needless to say, we could not afford the $2000 price tag on the one at Gardner Village, nor this beautiful $3000 Pottery Barn set. So I did some research and found Ana White. http://ana-white.com/

She had tons of furniture building plans, and I found a farmhouse table. Perfect! It seemed easy enough (famous last words...) and there were tons of testimonials and pictures to prove it. I figured, once I got Steve on board, we could finish this table in 3-4 weekends. It was a plan.

I got Steve on board, he said he could do it with my help. He bought the wood and put it in his Dad's shop in Orem to wait for the weekend that we could start work on it. This was around the winter of 2011. Months went by and all that had been done was the boards were "prepped" and ready to be put together. Hmm...my 3 weekend project was turning into much longer.

Next step, I decided I would do something I had control over. I hopped on KSL and for the next week I watched for ladder-back chairs. One day, I got lucky, and found a set of 6 ladderback chairs complete with a ruined dining room table for $75. STEAL! We got the chairs and the table. Figured we could recycle the legs off the table for our new table top, and save even more money.

The chairs were in good shape with plenty of seat padding, so all I needed to do was recover the pads and refinish the chair. Awesome. Things were coming together. We got all of the chairs stripped and ready to be stained by August of 2012 (yes, just 8-10 months beyond when we decided to embark on this project). I stained the chairs, with the help of my mom, recovered the chairs with the help of Steve and Dad, and was ready for the next step. Building the table!!!

(Unfortunately all of my "BEFORE" pictures were erased with phone/camera issues this last summer...oh well!)

Removing stain, a tedious process..

Staining the chairs

Steve got to work and did an amazing job, but got stuck at few parts. Luckily we have a carpenter in our neighborhood and Steve enlisted his help (without him, we NEVER would have finished this project!). They got the table finished, so we just needed to stain the table and the legs (from the other table we bought with the chairs), and we would be done! Unfortunately, all of this "finally-a-project-is-coming-together-and-we-just-need-to-finish-it" energy came at the worst time to be staining/varnishing in Utah....the weather was <20 degrees EVERY DAY. But I was determined and I bundled up in pajamas, sweats, long sleeved shirts, sweatshirts, beanies, mittens, and gloves to head out to the garage and stain my days away.

Days like these is when we worked on this project. COLD

We finished the table. It is BEAUTIFUL. We are so proud of ourselves and can't wait to show it off to the next person that walks through our front door. So come on over and revel in the beauty of this ~~3-weekend~~ over a year long project of ours!