The DECK - Part 5: Not done yet...

I'm going to own up to the fact right now... we haven't finished the arbor/trellis yet because it is really, really HOT around here these days and motivation is really hard to come by when you are faced with near life threatening heat vs. staying inside and waiting for cooler weather.  Don't judge us.

But of course we didn't stay inside, that would be silly.  We just relocated to the garage with fans set up and built ourselves a lovely outdoor dining table from the cedar left over from building the deck.

Backstory.  John is a math teacher.  Thus, he is the go to guy around here for figuring out how much of whatever material we need for projects.  At least once a week I'm asking "how many feet is XX inches" and he just knows.  Impressive.  However, I'm pretty sure that Sam and Will would also just know, so without taking anything away from my wonderful family, I think I'm just not as quick with the math as they are and since someone is usually around to answer my questions I fill my brain with other stuff.

Learned helplessness.  Try it sometime.

Moving on.


Needless to say, John figured out how much decking to buy.  And wouldn't you know it, he was off by just ONE board.  And, it was an extra board so we could take it back and get some $$.   But what to do with all the extra cut off pieces?  Why, build a table of course.

Here is how it went down.

First we figured out how big we could make it with what was leftover.

It's 3.5' x 8.5' 

Then we ripped down some salvage from the old deck
for the skirting part of the frame.

Then we added more reclaimed wood for
the internal structure.

FYI - This is the underside of the table. 

Then we added legs and cross support along the bottom,
which also acts as a wonderful footrest.

After we squared it up, we added 3 of the 4
 side pieces for easy assembly.

This also eliminated the surprise factor at the end
of the middle pieces not being the right size, etc..

Then we cut and attached the middle pieces,
then attached the final side piece and...

IT'S DONE!!

And, because I'm a dork, here is the view from our dining table inside...

A few notes about the project...

We saved part of the original deck for projects like this.  Then we started to imagine ourselves outside eating at the table.  The reclaimed wood was all grooved up and dirty/mossy it just felt disgusting.  We figured we'd have to spend hours sanding it so it didn't feel gross and then it would look just like the new stuff we already had left over.  So we compromised and decided on new stuff for the top because it feels SO much cleaner. 

Although we still used the reclaimed for the structure, we're going to seal it when we seal the top of the table.  Our plan is to do that when we seal the decking.  However, weeks of 90+ degrees in the forcast means that isn't happening anytime soon :( 

It is already more weathered than the newer stuff and looks trendy-rustic.  That is a term.  One that I just made up.

We built it so large because the deck is so freaking big.  Our existing table was a smaller, square table (2.5' x 2.5') and looked really small on the new deck.  Now we can seat 6 adults comfortably and easily get twice as many around the table if needed :)

I would estimate that it took about 6 hours to build give or take.  

Here's the budget breakdown...

$12 for more cedar.  Unfortunately, the reason we had the 2 longer pieces for the sides was because we couldn't use them on the deck because they were too warped/crooked.  We forgot about that until we tried to square the table and found it impossible.  So we had to go and buy another piece for the longer sides.  Which was very ironic because we had just returned a piece that would have done the job 2 days earlier...  

$7 for screws

$5 for shims/glue

So for less than $25 we've got a 3.5' x 8.5' outdoor dining table.  Score.