The Year of Do: Building A Kitchen Table: Part 2

It's been almost a month since I last wrote about the kitchen table I had great plans to build. 35 days to be exact. I promise, I haven't given up or forgotten about it, but with the semester winding down for my students and lots of traveling, there has been little time left over for table making (or laundry, or cooking, or grocery shopping for that matter).

But that all changed yesterday. The table building is officially underway! (In my mind there is lots of cheering and applauding by the many people reading that statement.)

Do I have any idea what I'm doing? Nope. My grandad owns his own construction company and I grew up with the men in my family saying things like, "Why would we pay someone to build a garage when we can do it ourselves?" My earliest memory in the house I grew up in was my dad tearing down one of the walls to, "open things up." However, if there is such a thing as a construction gene, it most certainly skipped over me. Around the age of 7, I attempted to make my own foot stool because I figured it would be cool to build something. I thought it was the best made foot stool in the entire world until a few years ago when I was cleaning out my old closet at my parents house and ran across it. If any of you watch The Office, you may remember the end table Michael Scott once tried to make that almost resembled paint stirrers duct taped together. My beloved footstool looked pretty similar to that.

But this table is going to be different. Why you ask? Because this time I have an acute awareness of the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing (something my 7 year old self was lacking), and the help of someone who not only owns a hammer, but knows how to use it.

Meet Ash...

Ash's previous construction successes include a pergola, a dog house (complete with it's own porch), and not one, but two tables that look nothing like what I built when I was 7.

To be honest, I was really surprised how easily it has come together so far. In just a few hours, we got all of the pieces for the top put together using something called a "pocket screw." I'm still unsure exactly what that is, but I know you use things that look like this...

To make holes that look like this....

And somehow screws go into said holes in a way that pulls the two pieces of wood together so they are flush on top, with the only visible screw holes tucked inconspicuously underneath the table. (See...I am learning something!)

But mostly, I just stuck to using tools I was already pretty familiar with...