This is part two of our kitchen table build
we'll be showing the rest of the process and the completed table in this video. Our total
cost for this table is under $150 and we're using all reclaimed Lumber in the build.
when we left off last time I was drilling the holes in the metal straps that I'll
be using to attach the diagonal braces.
The diagonal braces themselves will be made
of the same three and a quarter by three and a quarter Oak pieces that I use for the rest of
the base and so I need to attach those metal braces to them so I'm clamping them on and
transferring the holes this table will be a custom fit to our kitchen design it's going
to be tall a counter height table and it'll be long and narrow eight feet by 32 inches wide
the table top is solid Live Oak an inch and a half thick extremely heavy and so I want this
base to be very heavy duty very sturdy that's why I'm installing these diagonal braces
here I'm cutting bevels on the end of the diagonal braces they're already cut to length
and I think these bevels will add a nice look here is a drawing that I made of the project when
I was conceptualizing it I wanted to add some metal to the wood structure and so I'm using metal
pieces to attach the diagonal braces to the base I'm having to fabricate all of my own brackets of
course and there are a couple of pieces that are definitely unusual that I'm going to have to
weld up I dug through the shop and found some old scrap metal that'll work perfectly for
this I'm going to be using a piece of pipe combined with a piece of rectangular Channel
and some other little pieces of scrap metal to make that bottom connection here I am welding
them together I'm not the best welder but I can definitely stick it together I'm going to be
grinding it all down before I finish it anyway with everything fabbed I'm ready to submerse
everything in a couple baths of vinegar this will remove the scale from the strap metal that
I used and the piece that I fabricated and it'll remove the nickel from the bolts washers and nuts
this will need to soak for about 24 hours maybe 36 but it should completely remove everything and
by the time I'm done I'll have a nice uniform color and look on all the metal pieces instead
of having shiny bolts and dark scaly metal I've removed the pieces from the vinegar
bath it's important to immediately rinse them dry them off and coat them in oil
they rust incredibly fast if you don't here I'm doing a little routing on the pendulum
brace the way these metal straps attached the ones from one side will overlap the ones from
the other side and I don't want them to stick way out so I'm recessing the straps that
go on one side of the brace and that where those attached to the pendulum I just traced
the location of the brace and then use the router to remove the material to the correct
depth and finish up the edges with the Chisel in the last video we showed how I made the
mortise and tenons and here I am working on the shoulder of one of these it didn't fit
quite right and just needed a little trimming next I'm ready to perform the final
sand before finishing on all of the base pieces we just got a little
video but this took several hours now moving back to the top in our last video I
put in 18 bow ties to stabilize the table top and now those have been drying for a few days
and I'm ready to start flattening the table here's a few of the tools that I'll be using
a couple different types of planers power and manual some winding sticks Sanders and Etc
the table top had warped a little bit after glue up due to those cracks in the wood I've
stabilized those now with the bow ties and I'm ready to use a hand plane to take the warp out
of this top I'm using a slightly rounded blade on my plane and I'm going across the grain of
the wood this helps me to quickly hog off the material to get it close and here you can
see what that looks like the the look that that slightly rounded blade leaves on the
wood it really removes the material quickly once I had it close with the hand plane
I was ready to move on to the belt sander I'm using 80 grit sandpaper here to take off the
highs and lows left from that blade that I used on my hand plane this will allow me to get the entire
table pretty close once I'm done here I'll use a smaller sander to move through the finer grits
after the top was pretty well finished up I was ready to go ahead and remove the extra material
off the ends and take the piece to finish length I made it an additional three or four inches
long so that I'd have extra material to cut off at the end it really makes it easier when you
do your glue up and stuff to have some extra material that you know you'll be removing here
I've clamped on a piece of Oak that has a nice straight edge that I'll be using as a guide or
a fence so that when I make this cut it'll be nice and straight and here I'm just double
checking myself I want to make sure that it is absolutely square with the rest of the table
and my measurements are right because I can't do this twice and then I'm using my little
cordless handsaw here to remove the material now I just need to move on to the other side
and repeat the process over there I'm cutting this table to exactly eight feet long and
it really feels huge it's a very long table The Next Step was to put a chamfer on the edge
of the table I like a nice simple elegant design and so a 45 degree chamfer was the perfect
solution this part was a little stressful for me just because I'm always worried about
the wood splitting out especially along these long edges sometimes you can catch the seam
in the wood or a natural crack in the wood and it'll just chip out a big long chunk and I was
really worried about that happening fortunately that wasn't a concern at all this wood is
very hard very tough and gnarly and stuck together well didn't want to chip out the wood
species I'm using for this table is all live oak which is incredibly hard gnarly and tough
it's about twice as hard as normal Oak which is already very hard so it's been interesting
it's very hard on tools I've dulled two sets of chisels so far on this project and had
to resharpen my plane blades many times I was worried that this router bit wouldn't
make it through this edging process [Music] that pretty much finishes up the top of the table
it'll just need to be sanded later but before I do that I want to flip the table over and work on
the underneath side it is also a little warped and needs some work so I just need to get this flatter
than it is I have an eight foot level that I'll be using as a straight edge on the back side here to
make sure that I have any warps or bows out of it and so I'm laying that up and I'm just looking for
gaps underneath then I do a little marking so that I can come back later and remove that material
on the high spots with a electric planer to begin with first I look down the length of the
table and make some markings as I go for later then I go across makes those same kind of markings
just looking for little gaps with a straight edge just making some notes for myself and I'll
be using those as reference points as I'm going over with the hand plane like here
of course I'll have to do this several times as I planed it off I lose my marks and
I have to re measure and you know take a new look at it with the straight edge and so I
repeat this process several times [Music] this electric hand planer is wonderful for
hogging off material and I used it for that quite a bit but once I get close I have to move to
the hand plane which I don't think I got any video of on the back side here but I use that quite
a bit and then finished up with the belt sander I also did put a bevel on the back side
a much smaller bevel than on the top The Next Step was to fill in the cracks and some
of the bigger holes in this wood this wood has a lot of character lots of cracks that need to be
filled there was some wood boring insects that had left tunnels through part of this wood and
all of that needs to be filled in even though this is the underneath of the table I want to get
it filled in so that it further stabilizes the table top here I'm using some five minute epoxy
to fill up one of the larger cracks the epoxy is great for filling in large gaps but it's fairly
thick and doesn't flow real good it also sets up really fast so I only used it for the really
big cracks the really big voids for these smaller cracks I used either super glue for the really
small ones or a custom putty that I make myself the super glue works really great to get into
those tight fine cracks I have a thick super glue you can get it in different viscosities I get
the thick kind and it has just the right viscosity to soak into fine cracks and really seal them up
after everything had dried I did a rough sanding and I was ready to flip the table back over to the
front side first thing I wanted to do on the front was to check everything out to make sure it wasn't
warped or twisted and fortunately it looked like it was stable that nothing had moved so I moved
on to filling cracks I had originally intended to use epoxy and kind of the same combination
of stuff on the top that I did on the bottom but I got a good look at the epoxy that I used
on the bottom and didn't like the way it turned out it had some bubbles in it it looked kind of
semi-transparent and wasn't real appealing and I thought what looked the nicest was the putty
so I decided to use that exclusively on the top I'm using a mix of wood glue dust that I pulled
out of the sander from when I was sanding this table top and some pre-made Putty from the
store that had a nice coloration I used that to darken it this process took way longer than
I expected there are so many cracks when you get to looking I probably made 15 batches of
putty up to fill all these cracks in the table back in the shop I'm putting a layer of plastic
over my workbench so that I can move on to the next step I'll be assembling the base for
the final time and applying the finish this is a really fun part of the process everything is
built test fitted and sanded and ready to go and so this is this is really fun I'm just bolting
everything together here I'll be assembling it right on my table top where it's easy to get
to everything for the finishing process I'm not gluing any of these joints I'm just bolting it
together with some self-tapping lag bolts that I made one of the reasons I decided not to glue
it is so that in the future if someone wanted to lower this table it is counter top height so
it's pretty high and in the future if you know one of my progeny owned this table and wanted to
lower it to normal table height they could just easily take it apart and shorten the legs and
it wouldn't be too big of a deal to shorten it the legs are standalone pieces that are connected
by a Cross Beam that I'm putting on right now one thing I might mention is that I did put a
little toe piece onto the side of each leg to raise the leg off of the floor by about an inch
so that it just rests on those end toe pieces this cross piece is connected with a couple
of dovetail bits that I did those worked out really well and are nice and sturdy and this
pendulum is another mortise and Tenon fit and it's finally time to apply the finish I'm
applying a nice wet coat of boiled linseed oil and enjoying the color and figure that it brings out
in this wood we'll be using a little bit different finishes for the top of the table and the base
of the table for the base I'm just using boiled linseed oil I'll be doing several applications at
least four and and perhaps more with a little bit of time for each one of those to dry it'll leave
a nice matte finish that's still beautiful and durable but for the top of the table I'll be using
a heavy duty polyurethane finish the first coat is always the most fun to apply it's so fun to watch
as it's transformed from this Dusty pale color to this Rich vibrant colorful wood that you see here
this oil that I'm using is some that we had left over from when we did the Earthen floors in our
home we bought it in bulk and had some left over so I'm able to use some of that extra here and I
have it cut with Citrus solvent the Citrus solvent allows it to absorb deeper into the wood and dry
faster it also smells ridiculously good it smells just like fresh squeezed orange juice I will go
over this several times until the wood won't take anymore and then I'll allow it to set for maybe
15 or 30 minutes before I wipe off the excess [Music] now back to the table top I'm ready to sand
down all of that wood filler and begin the final sanding process I'm expecting this to
take a good while possibly a couple of days I'm using a coarse 80 grit sandpaper on this
belt sander to quickly remove the excess Putty from those cracks that I filled I did have to
go back in and touch up or refill some of the cracks that I didn't get enough putty in the
first time once the coarse sanding was done I was ready to move on to the finer grits and
for those I move on to a small orbital sander the small sander I started out with the 120
and then worked up to 180 and finally 220.
I buy sandpaper in bulk in 50 packs and it's a good
thing I do because I use a ton of it probably at least 15 or so of each grit I use the hand sander
to sand the sides and the chamfer as well it's really starting to look nice now it's getting very
smooth to the touch and almost shiny even without a finish and that finishes up the sanding on this
table top it is finally ready for finish we're going to flip it over so the back side is facing
up and do the finish on the back first we've been trying to decide what kind of a finish to do on
this tabletop we could either go natural with like an oil finish covered with polyurethane or
use the graying compound to accelerate the aging and have a neat grayed look and we couldn't decide
which way to go so we did a test piece to see what they both look like we found that the oil brought
out a lot of interesting color variation in the wood and that the aging accelerator just washed
everything out it turned everything different Shades of Gray and so in the end we decided to
go with the natural color of the wood and use the oil we're now applying the oil to the back of
the table top the oil is just the first step in the finish for the table top we'll be putting on
a polyurethane after this oil dries so for now I just need to apply one heavy coat of this oil to
both sides of the surface and allow that to dry one coat will be sufficient to bring out the
natural color of the wood which is what we're really going for and by only using one coat
it'll also dry faster so that's why we're doing one coat of oil and after that we'll move
on to the polyurethane step this oil is such a fun process it gives us our first Glimpse
at how the table will look and what we're seeing is just a lot of beautiful color come out
this wood has so much character each piece looks completely different than the others but they
all go together it's really beautiful there's so much interest in this piece we love it and
these bow ties really look nice in here too it's really been a challenge working with
this old warped and cracked wood there's been a few times during the project where I
wondered if it was going to turn out it was behaving really strangely kind of warping
and moving and it was a real challenge to stabilize the piece and to fill all the
cracks but the end result is absolutely gorgeous and I'm really glad we used this
wood it's full of character and beauty I allowed the oil a couple of days
to cure and then we brought the piece into the workshop we'll be applying
polyurethane in this next step and we need a fairly dust free environment
that's why we brought it inside I wipe the top down with mineral spirits just to
remove all of the dust from sitting outside for a couple of days make sure it's perfectly clean
and then I allow that a little bit of time for the mineral spirits to evaporate and now I'm getting
ready to apply the polyurethane polyurethane has a lot of advantages it's incredibly tough and
durable and therefore perfect for a kitchen table top but it's also difficult to apply so it's not a
beginner product beginners can use it but it's it is more difficult than other types of finishes it
goes on rather thick and is fairly unforgiving it does show some brush Strokes although a few
of those will even out as it starts to dry it also has a strong tendency to drip and so it's
best used on a horizontal surface like this where you don't have to fight gravity too much the edges
is something that you have to be really careful of as you can see I'm wiping the edges down I'll
do the edges last once I do the top of the table polyurethane also dries relatively slowly it takes
three to four hours for it to dry and so in that time if a bug lands on it that bug is going
to get stuck there and it's going to ruin your finish and you'll have to remove it before you can
apply another layer also little nibs of dust get stuck in the Finish if there's any activity
going on and so it's just a little bit more difficult to apply I dread applying it I I don't
like using it but I like the result that it gives well it's about nine o'clock in the morning and
I'm getting ready to flip this tabletop over and put on the final finishing coat on the top
surface of the table unfortunately we had a very cold night last night it was the coldest night of
the year so far got down to 14 degrees and even at nine o'clock it's still about 35 degrees in
this shipping container and that's way too cold to apply a finish to this table I just took a
temperature reading on the surface of the table and it's about 35 degrees so I need to get it up
to at least 45 or 50 degrees before I put some finish on it and so we decided to bring in some
heaters so I have an electric heater going on the other side of the table and I just now brought
in a little propane powered heater I do have good ventilation going in here so that's not a concern
but I've just got to get some heat into the shipping container to get my table top temperature
up so I can apply the finish and then it'll be in a race to get on all the coats that I need before
it gets down way below freezing again tonight for the top coat I'm using a gloss polyurethane
cut with a little bit of citrus solvent I'll use gloss for all of the coats except for the final
coat in order to preserve as much of the color and character of the wood as I possibly can and
then for the final coat I'll use a satin so that I get the right Sheen once everything was ready
we flipped the table top over to have the top side up and then I cleaned off the surface with some
mineral spirits before I applied the polyurethane and I'm getting ready to apply the first
coat here I'm hoping to get five coats on today uh it'll be a race I'm not sure if I
can make it or not I will settle with four four is definitely plenty five is kind of over
the top but I'd like to get five on if I can the reason this is going to be such a race is
I need to wait three to four hours between each coat and I need to put the final coat on
before I go to bed at night because if I wait until in the morning it will have
cured too much and the next layer may not Bond so it all has to be done before I go
to bed tonight since I got a late start this morning the amount of coats that I'm able to
apply today will be determined by the dry time it's 9 30 red is putting the final
coat on the table he's been trying to get all the coats on today chilly night
34 degrees already, we'll go check it out well it's late and cold and I'm putting on
the final coat I'm using a satin for this so this will be our finished Sheen so not too
shiny but I think all the color and character is still coming through so I'm really happy
with it I was able to get four coats total we're ready to assemble the base so we're bringing
over the pieces and getting ready to assemble it in the kitchen we're moving this folding table out
of the way it's served as our kitchen table in the meantime and we're getting things cleaned up and
ready here I'm putting together those diagonal cross braces I tried my best to drill all of these
holes through the brackets in these diagonal cross pieces uniformly so that maybe they would be
interchangeable but I just wasn't able to get it right they still all only fit on the one end
so I have to keep track of which end they go on and that's definitely been a challenge since I've
had to put all of these metal pieces through some processing you know with the vinegar bath
and everything so I've been trying to keep them all separate and identified in some
way so I know which ones go to which piece and so far as I'm assembling these it looks
like I've kept them sorted properly they all seem to be going on okay one additional step
that I've done to all these metal pieces the bolts and the brackets is to apply a coat of
wax to them I had applied some oil to them I didn't feel like that was quite enough protection
against rust and corrosion so in addition to that I went on with the wax so I wiped everything down
to remove any excess oil and then applied a micro crystalline wax the brand is Renaissance
wax to all the pieces and that should give them the best protection that I can give them
without changing the appearance of the metal and now for the final assembly I just stand up
these end pieces here kind of getting everything laid out now got these end pieces standing up
trying to be careful not to bump them and make them fall over and then put on that cross piece
those dovetails just slide down into place and I bolt them in and now to assemble the diagonal
cross pieces here I'm assembling the hinge piece that I had fabricated I've had this mocked up and
pretty much in place but I've never had all of the bolts in everything and so I'm hoping it all lines
up this will be the test for sure so I'm bolting it to the pendulum brace up top and then I'll
be putting in the lag bolts to attach the hinge brace down at the bottom of the leg those lag
bolts went in fine and I'm ready to move on to the other brace unfortunately I needed a little
bit more clearance in one of the bolt holes for the attachment to the pendulum so I did a quick
walk back to the shop and drilled out that hole about a sixteenth of an inch larger to give me a
little extra room these brace pieces fit into the recess that I created with the router and
chisels and so once these braces are attached they sit flush with the outside of the wood
that'll allow the braces for the other diagonal piece to fit over the outside and be sitting on
the surface of the wood so they won't stick out and now I'm getting ready to attach the
other diagonal brace I'm just slipping the top set of braces up over the other
set of braces on the pendulum makes a nice crisscross pattern up there then I'll
be attaching that hinge joint at the bottom in general this base follows a fairly standard
design for this type of table but this pendulum brace here with this crisscross diagonal braces
was my own invention I haven't seen another table like this and so I felt good about this I love
the design I also love the metal addition I think that's something different as well I love the look
of it it just adds a lot of character and interest and now I'm just tightening everything up
making sure everything is good in snug and this thing turned out really solid it doesn't
wiggle at all it is it is Rock Solid foreign but it's over in the shop and it's an extremely
heavy tabletop it's really more than April and I can carry for very far and so we backed up the
car and set one end of it in the trunk of the car and now April's driving the car forward and
I'm walking along behind it carrying the back we have had our son or son-in-law help
a few times but it was late at night and we didn't want to bother them and
here's April and I muscling it in to place that last little bit from the
car to the house and it looks beautiful now we just need to attach it to the base I've
already pre-drilled four holes through the base that I'll bring a screw up through there and
attach the top to the base with four screws I've carefully positioned the top on the
base and now I'm transferring those holes into the top I need to pre-drill those holes
into the top surface of the table so that I can get those screws in there without the
screws breaking this wood is extremely hard so we just got it in place we transferred the
holes then we moved the table top over a little bit so I could access the holes better and here
I am drilling those holes out pre-drilling for those screws and then we'll move the table
back into place and I'll insert the screws I will mention that I left plenty of clearance
around the hole in the base that the screw grows through so that as the table top expands
there'll be clearance and room for that screw to move over from side to side and lengthwise
a little bit it's really important to allow for tabletop expansion when you attach it to the
base so that as it moves with the different temperatures and humidity levels it doesn't
get in a bind now I'm just doing one last check to make sure the top is in exactly
the right place before I put in the screws and now I'm just putting the screws in I'm
just getting them snug I don't want them to be tight I want them to be able to move the
screws have a broad washer type head and then there's another washer on that so that it has
lots of room to move this slick waxed concrete floor made it easy to just slide along to make
these attachments it was easier than crawling and the table is finally complete this has been
a really fun project it's been really satisfying we love the look of the table we find it to be
very attractive the wood is just gorgeous and it goes really well in the home it's fun to make
this table custom fit to our house it's just the right size and design to fit our kitchen and
dining area and it was amazing to use all this reclaimed Lumber that we had also used on the barn
and on the well house and in other parts of the house and so it really feels like it's bringing
the whole place together in the home so it has a lot of special meaning to us we really love the
table working with this reclaimed wood has been extremely satisfying so glad we did it has so
much Beauty and character but it did take a lot more time and was much more difficult than using
you know store-bought nice clean fresh wood but this was satisfying in a way that store-bought
wood just would not have been this was also of course extremely inexpensive our total cost on the
wood is only 12.50 and then by the time you add all the hardware and finishings we're still less
than 150 dollars for this table and here we're putting together some bar stools that we ordered
these are a little smaller than we were expecting so they won't be the main chairs for the table
these will be some kind of backup and extra chairs we'll be looking for something that's larger
and more comfortable for our primary chairs and we found some after considerable looking
we've found some larger chairs that we think will be really nice they've come in and
now I'm starting to put those together these new larger chairs were about
eighty dollars each and the smaller bar stools that we had earlier were about 50 each these chairs were easy to assemble they
went together real quick and what's nice about them is that they have a broad range of
adjustments so they'll fit these taller tables so our kitchen is officially done we have
the table in place we just got our chairs in yesterday red got them put together
this morning so those are looking great we have six of these and then we have four
bar stools we originally thought that these bar stools would be great but they're a
little on the small side and not the most comfortable so we did some more searching
and we found these which are looking nice kitchen is officially finished I
really like how everything turned out so it's eight feet long we'll easily
be able to fit 10 chairs around it lots of extra space here we did it narrow so
that we can just use the countertops to put the food on and then it won't take up so much
space here in the kitchen so kind of kind of a buffet style so it all really came together I
love this table love the character of the wood so in the next video we'll do an update on
our passive design and how it's performing this winter it's a very comfortable house
so we'll tell you more about that in next week's video and soon we'll be doing the
shower finishing up the master bathroom so thanks for watching and
join us again next week! [Music]