My wife and I are at the tail end of a very long and sometimes frustrating process of building a house. To fit in the new morning room off of the kitchen we decided we wanted a farmhouse table but all of the ones we liked were incredibly expensive. Therefore, I drew one up to fit out dimensions after looking at ana-white's website. the main difference was I shortened the base a bit to give a full 12" overhang so that a person could sit on the ends comfortably without jamming their knees into the table base.
I used 8/4 cherry and real breadboard edges (the original plans called for pocket hole screws...) for the top and douglas fir 4x4 and 2x4's for the bases. Did some research on how to age cherry and found a nice little article on using baking soda and warm water. The mixture reacts with the tannins in the wood and naturally darkens it. Sanded with 220 to get rid of the raised grain and put on a coat of BLO to bring out the grain. 4 coats of satin wipe-on poly followed by 1 coat of gloss wipe-on poly and sanding with 1200 grit between each coat.
My wife made her chalk paint debut with the base and finished it off with a brown wax distressed finish on top of the chalk paint. Pretty excited to close this Thursday and start having family meals around this table for years to come!
I used 8/4 cherry and real breadboard edges (the original plans called for pocket hole screws...) for the top and douglas fir 4x4 and 2x4's for the bases. Did some research on how to age cherry and found a nice little article on using baking soda and warm water. The mixture reacts with the tannins in the wood and naturally darkens it. Sanded with 220 to get rid of the raised grain and put on a coat of BLO to bring out the grain. 4 coats of satin wipe-on poly followed by 1 coat of gloss wipe-on poly and sanding with 1200 grit between each coat.
My wife made her chalk paint debut with the base and finished it off with a brown wax distressed finish on top of the chalk paint. Pretty excited to close this Thursday and start having family meals around this table for years to come!