A Dream Come True

My mom’s dream? To have all of her children, grandchildren and then some, sit at THE SAME table and eat a holiday meal. Well, this Christmas my mom’s dream came true:

Pavlo and I have actually felt very guilty that we’re “squatting” at my parent’s house (we call ourselves squatters since they’ve been kind enough to let us stay rent free…pretty sure it’s because they adore their grandkids) and we tore apart their sunroom only to partially completed it before diving into the renovations at our new house. We had completed the majority of the project only leaving a few loose ends in addition to one major thing…the table! If you think waaaaay back you’ll recall that the purpose of this whole remodel was to transform the sunroom into the eating area of the kitchen. Yes, well, it makes it difficult to use the new eating area of the kitchen when there’s no table.

My mom had searched high and low for the perfect table. She wanted one that sat at least 18 people (we have a large, and ever growing, family) and had a rustic, farmhouse look to it. Months of searching produced nothing but expensive, custom made farmhouse tables, so we came to an agreement. My parents would do exactly what they did for the rest of the room, they would purchase the materials and we (well, really Pavlo, though I did participate a little) would build it for them.

It just made more sense to go about it this way since the farmhouse tables my mom saw and liked were easily going for at least $3,000. Also, Pavlo had built a farmhouse table before so the project wasn’t exactly a stretch. Remember this table that he built for our last house?

Yes, that one clearly wasn’t suited to sit at least 18 people but since Pavlo rarely turns down a good challenge, he took on the project with the goal to complete it for Christmas Evening dinner! It admittedly took longer than we had hoped considering Pavlo has an actual full-time job, we were still renovating our house all while raising two little ones. These things in addition to all the other random, everyday things we have to manage, tended to delay the whole table-building process! As you can see from the first picture above it was clearly finished by Christmas…barely!

I’m going to follow up this post with a few posts on the process it took to build this farmhouse table, but I’ll leave you now with the first step to our very own, custom farmhouse table. That step was shopping! Yes, we ordered the legs from Tablelegs.com, which has great prices considering the cost of wood and the time Pavlo would have to put into perfecting 4 legs. Buying the legs ready to go is definitely a time saver and since well, time is money, it’s a money saver too! To be perfectly honest, if we had failed to find the legs for a specific price, then Pavlo would have built them as well.

Next came purchasing all the wood for the frame and for the top. To be quick about it, the entire table is made of pine. My mom wanted a wood that would actually weather over time and since pine is a softer wood, it would do the job! The only differences between the wood used to make the table frame versus the table top was that the frame was pre-primed wood (it was decided early on that it was going to be painted) and the top pieces were of varying widths so as to give a less perfect and more rustic appearance. Yep, those are the only differences!

As mentioned above I hope to be back soon with posts on how this 14′ table came about. It’s so gorgeous and it was so wonderful being able to bring to life my mom’s dream of having the whole family, even the littlest members, eat Christmas dinner around it. We’re looking forward to many more family gatherings in this room!

Oh, oh, one last thing before I go! Today happens to be Pavlo’s 30th birthday. I know, the big 3-0, what can I say, I married an old man! Since he doesn’t have Facebook this is the only way I can remotely publicly humiliate him! Happy birthday to my love, Pavlo! Can you believe we met 9 whole years ago? When you were 21? I’d like to tell you I love you as much as I did waaaay back then, but let’s face it, I’m not the same person I was then! Nope, definitely not the same person and I owe it all to you. I’d like to think I’m a actually a better person now because of you and I know for a fact I love you even more! Happy happy birthday!

You may also enjoy:

Frame It! The Story of a Kitchen Table To Top It All Off! Fireplace Beautification