Because we most likely will be living in an apartment in Germany, we needed a smaller dining room table. Our current table that Danny also made 3 years ago is 8 feet long and can fit 10 chairs. I didn't figure that would fit very well in an apartment. Danny and I went to a lumber yard in Wilmington to pick out some new wood for a shorter, 6 foot table. We went in thinking we would buy oak, but thanks to Covid-19, the lumber yard had a very limited supply of any of their speciality wood, so we went with Maple again. We do like Maple, we just had wanted to try something different. We lucked out that they had exactly what we needed. Almost literally. We bought every board, except one. And people, it was heavy! Both Danny and I were concerned about how heavy this table was going to end up, so he ended up planing the wood down and took off another 1/2 to 3/4 inch. I didn't take pictures of the beginning of the process, but here it is after he has it all glued up, and sanded down. I think he spent over 3 days sanding this thing. It is smooth as a baby's bottom! I ordered these steel-like legs off of Amazon. I have recently changed my decor to a more mid-century modern, so I needed more straight lines with this table.
After sanding, Danny used pocket screws to put the legs on the benches and tabletop. This is going to help us with our move, because they make it easy to take the legs off.
Finally, he moved to staining, and I sat out in the garage while he did it. We both almost had a heart attack....okay maybe just I almost had a heart attack, when we saw what the wood looked like after the first coat. Even after using wood conditioner, look how splotchy the stain looked! It was awful! I was so worried we had ruined it.
After some quick soul searching...or googling...I found out that Maple is known to be a very blotchy wood. I hadn't remembered this problem with the last table, but I had stained it very dark, so maybe I hadn't noticed. We found that if you mix shellac with denatured alcohol, we could combat against the blotchiness even better than using a wood conditioner. Off to Lowes Danny went, and to our amazement, the results were beautiful! Tada! Shellac + denatured alcohol=WINNER! If you compare the pictures above and below, you will see a noticeable difference. I am sooo thankful he stained the bottom of the benches first, and the table hadn't been touched. Here are the tops of the benches with our new trick.
And here is the bottom of the table.
Then Danny added a few coats of satin polyurethane to all of it (for durability, and to waterproof it).
Sidenote: My favorite bench is the top one in the picture below. If you can tell, it has an indent on the side of it. I LOVE that it makes the bench look more worn. Danny wanted to cut it out, but I voted for him to just sand it smooth and leave it. It looks amazing!
Voila! This baby is heavy and solid! I love it so much! I don't have a picture of it in the house---with a more beautiful background other than a garage---but it has to stay here until we move! Maybe I'll post a picture of it in the future. The table is gorgeous and I'm so proud of what Danny did! I can't wait to use it!
Here are the chairs I bought for the end of the table. I also ordered cute geometric pillows to be in the chairs as well.
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