Level & Lace: First Project... part 1

This post has been in revision for awhile because I was waiting to finish this project before I posted, but it is taking far too long so this will just have to be part one of this post.

When I started this blog I told myself I would not be writing about my home decor projects. Mostly because at the time I didn't have any home decor projects and there are so many out there that I didn't feel the need to. However, despite my resistance, I have caught the DIY bug... I think it is a young wife thing. Well, obviously not all young wives catch this bug, but pretty much every DIY person I have found is a wife and many of them are newly married. So I was doomed. Okay, I don't want to sound all anti-DIY or home decor, I actually really really love it. You could even say I've become obsessed with it. So let me tell you about our latest project...

I had already done some small projects around the house, but this week Alex and I started on our first BIG project. Okay, it wasn't really that big, but we are young and inexperienced at this whole thing so it was big for us. Lots of lessons to be learned. We made.... A TABLE! A pretty nice table, if I do say so myself.

After browsing around my new favorite blog, Remodelaholic, I found this amazing table. That is where it all started. I decided, "Hey! If someone else can make their own table why can't I?" Plus it looked pretty simple. Alex and I had been looking for a new table for months. I bought our current table at a garage sale for about 20 bucks. It was pretty ugly when we got it, but we spray painted it black and it was pretty cute... for a while. That was until the paint started chipping off and for the life of me I couldn't make that table look clean. Anyways, like this person did, we saved the legs of our table and just made a new table top.

So, after we did some measurements and calculations we headed off to Rick's Bargain Bin for some cheap 2x4's. The first lesson to be learned, 2 x 4's are not actually 2 inches by 4 inches. What? they are more like 1.5" x 3.5". So after we bought our ~~1.5 x 3.5's~~ 2 x 4's we had to redo all of our measurements.

This is our first furniture making project so you could probably guess that there were a few snags along the way. Obstacle #1: We live in a small apartment so our first question to ourselves was, "Where the heck are we going to build a table?!" We are also on the second floor so as far as outdoor spaces goes, all we have is a tiny deck. Obstacle #2: After building our table on our tiny deck, trying to fit the table through our sliding glass doors after we built it. Obstacle #3 Apparently stain has a much stronger smell than paint, so staining inside the house was probably not my brightest idea (I feel like a bit of an idiot for attempting that one). Obstacle #4 Wobbly legs... So our table would have been finished by now if it weren't for the fact that we have never built a table (or any other piece of furniture that didn't come in a box). So right now we are figuring out a remedy for the legs being so wobbly, oh and that we now have quarter inch gaps between our boards on the table top... sigh. We have completely deconstructed the table and are in the process of rebuilding. Oh well, It is an adventure and we are learning a lot about how to actually build furniture.

Well I have some pictures of our progress thus far.