Outdoor table-DIY

I am so excited to share my new outdoor table with you guys! We were in dire need of a new outdoor table (seriously, our old wood table started growing things with all the rain and had basically been rotting away). Why not build our own? I had a vision for a farmhouse-type table but it needed be built on the cheap. My dad had some old treated wood (used to be school bleachers) that I knew would work perfectly for the top of the table (free!). The hubs went out and bought some treated 4x4's and 2x4's for the legs and the frame (around 15$). And the table begins to form!
Daddy's little helper (testing out the sturdiness of the legs...ha!).




Building the frame...








Adding the legs...








Adding support boards...








Adding the top (this is where I took over)...
and when I took over, I forgot to take process pics...




Looks awesome, right? Don't you love how it turned out? Maroon and gold, gooo lions! SACS pride baby (my old high school). Okay, I do love my old high school, but this was not the vision! This table still needed some work, a lot of work!

My next step was to sand the top...and sand the dickens out of it! I used a belt sander so it would strip most of the paint off, then I used a palm sander to smooth it out (and used palm sander on the frame and legs). More pics...








I LOVE the old bolt holes and splits in the wood! The more beat up, the better!




You get the idea, right? This was definitely the time consuming part of the project. Might I mention that Caleb finished his part of the project (building frame and legs) in 20 minutes...seriously? He's a machine! I won't even tell you how long my part of the project took me! Anyway, after I got the boards looking the way I wanted them, I gently smoothed them out with the palm sander and lightly sanded the rest of the table so it would be ready to paint. Next up, painting the legs white and polyurethaning the top.

Here is the difference that the poly makes (looks good and makes the surface wipeable)...








And here is the top after two coats of poly:




I used satin polyurethane and only did two coats because I did not want the table to look shiny, I just wanted to enhance the color and make it a wipeable surface. One coat was not enough because most of it absorbed into the wood. It depends on the type of wood and personal preference!

The last step of the project was distressing the legs a bit by sanding along the edges and corners.
Here it is all finished (in all its glory:))...












Okay, now that I have set some sort of record for the most pictures posted in one blog entry, I will call it good. What do you think of my new (old) table? I love, love, love it! Now, if only it were cool enough outside to enjoy our new table (I mean, maybe I'll sit out there at 6 am before we hit 90 degrees...got to love Texas!). Has anyone noticed how much I love to use parentheses (love them!)? Haha. Goodnight.