For a while, Nora and I have wanted something like a buffet table in the dining room to replace the IKEA dresser currently on the west wall. We thought it might make it more like a dining room and less like Nora's closet. Since "real" furniture exceeds these graduate students' budget, I jumped on the chance for a cast-off from work. In addition to lots of sweet science gear for the lab, this table was unwanted and hitched a ride home on the top of my car.To make look a little less like we stole a table from school, I figured the easiest rehab would be a new tabletop, so I picked up some pine 1x4 and 1x6 boards. These got chopped to create a staggered layout.
I had read in a couple places about artificially "aging" wood, in order to make it look like maybe you actually did the eco-conscious thing and used reclaimed wood. That would be false. But to make my cheap pine boards look like well-loved pieces of historical lumber, I used various metal instruments (screws, hammers, bike parts) to beat the crap out of the wood. That way at least it would match our wood floors post-Gertie...
To bring out the artificial imperfections/distressing and the surprisingly nice grain of the wood, I slopped on a quite dark mahogany stain and immediately wiped off any excess with a rag. This left the dents and dings with darker staining and a less intense, "aged" background stain.
After this I drilled angled, counter-sinked pilot holes on the bottom so I could assemble all the pieces into a single piece with pocket screws.
Once the sawdust had cleared, I killed a few hundred (thousand) brain cells putting on three coats of polyurethane in the basement, followed by an attempt to glue the edges together.
After the glue dramatically proved insufficient (ouch), I turned to mechanical means, and then L-bracketed it to the original tabletop, thus avoiding screwing down through the top of the table or gluing it to the surface.
That's it! Since we already had the stain, finish, and most of the tools I needed, we got a unique (that's for sure) table on the cheap! We'll have to devise some storage underneath, probably a mix of shelving and baskets. For now, here are a couple pictures of the finished product:
