Out With The Old...
A couple of years ago we bought a new table for the front balcony. We were pretty excited about it because we thought we were getting a great deal. However, when the table arrived it had the flimsiest, thinnest top that I'd ever seen on an outdoor table. It even creaked, and when you put pressure on it, you could hear a distinct buckling sound as if it would break in half!
Finally I decided to just build a new table while attempting to reuse the legs from old one. I really had no idea what I was doing, but I thought it shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
The old table top, seen below in a close-up, was complete garbage from the start. After just a month under the sun we discovered that it wasn't even continuous slabs of wood, but was lots of smaller thin pieces glued together. I didn't notice this when I bought it because it had a layer of stain that concealed the fact.
The sun completely removed the layer, and all of the wood came apart. It was super flimsy, and I didn't even feel safe seating more than 2 people at it for fear of it falling through.
In With the New....
I took a trip down to the Home Depot after taking some measurements of the old legs. I decided to make the new table about a foot longer and 6 inches wider than the old one. It seemed like the legs would be able to support it.
I have built a few things here and there, but have never tried to build something this big so I was a bit dubious that it was going to look good in the end. I decided to evenly space out the top boards until I got the width that I wanted, and cut some supporting boards to go across the bottom.
Once I got all the boards home and stacked up, the first thing I did was pull out the planer that I'd had in storage for several years. I don't know why, but I get an unexplainable satisfaction from planing wood. Something about taking a rough surface and making it smooth and even is extremely pleasing to me.
In fact, I am always looking for a reason to use this thing. The downside is that it makes an absolute mess, as you can see. Especially when doing bulk work like this.
After the boards were all planed, I cut them to the proper lengths. Afterward I cut four cross boards to run along the bottom of the table. It was completely arbitrary, but it seemed like it would work just fine.
It took me a lot longer than I had hoped to finish because other things kept coming up. I never seem to get more than an hour stretch of time where I can be away from @little-ricky. Basically, I can only do activities where I can use a computer while watching him.
In the end, all added up, it really only took me a few hours to get the boards cut and everything screwed together. I ended up having to go back to Home Depot to get the right sized bolts to mount the legs. Somewhat embarrassingly for the original company that made the first table, the legs felt much, much stronger connected to my table top.
After building the table top and new benches, I had to move them through the house, upstairs and onto the balcony. There was no way I was going to be able to attach them beforehand and manage to fit them through the doors.
Big Mistakes and Lessons Learned
Since I was completely doing this DIY project with no prior experience and not a lot of experience working with wood I made one pretty big mistake. I didn't let the wood dry out a bit before starting this project!
The lumber that I used was pretty damn cheap, which is perfectly fine for what I wanted to use it for. I wasn't trying to make a fancy table, just something solid to replace the old one. After staining the wood it looked absolutely fantastic, and we were super happy with it. However, about 2 months later I got up one morning and went outside to look at it and found that there were sap leaking out everywhere completely ruining the stain job.
It was a LOT of sap. Then entire surface of the table looked like someone poured wet sugar on it and let it crystalize. I waited a while longer until I was sufficiently satisfied that the wood had dried completely. Afterward, I re-sanded and stained the entire surface of the table and benches. It has been several months now, and it still looks great. I guess I will know for next time!
I would really appreciate your support!
