Josh has had the sweetest tradition over the last few years of gifting me with blog books for each year I have blogged. I kind of dropped the habit of scrapbooking once I began blogging and we missed those years of memories in a tangible book.
But the past few blog years have contained less and less posts.
It doesn't help that my real camera isn't working...
Anyway, I decided that we actually DID have some fabulous memories to capture from 2018 that I want to backlog for my future blog books I will receive from Josh (hint, hint;).
My first post is a project that began at the beginning of 2018 and took the better part of the year to complete, but we eventually got it done!
We saved all of our Christmas money and added it to the Lowe's gift cards we received so we could make the table we had always dreamed of having.
And because buying a 10' table just wasn't an option, we decided to build one.
As our family has grown we began running out of seating for any additional people that might be at our home to eat with us...and we always seem to have extra mouths to feed and people to enjoy at mealtime. So it was a want, but certainly a need as well.
As we all know, the first step of a project can sometimes be the most difficult.
It took us nearly two weeks to purchase the wood.
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| January 12, 2018 |
An additional two weeks went by before we even began the sanding process.
And that process seemed to take FOREVER!
So.Much.Sanding.
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| January 24, 2018 |
Then the pieces began taking shape (another 2 weeks later, ha!)
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| February 3, 2018 |
With the cuts made we were a little more motivated to begin putting the pieces together.
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| February 9, 2018 |
Then the process of staining.
The first coat went on WAY too thick. It took several days to dry completely.
We learned quickly from that lesson and the other two coats went much quicker.
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| February 13, 2018 |
My parents let us borrow some folding chairs so we could begin using the table.
I'd like to say we jumped on the benches super quick, but life happened...
Here was our first dinner at the new table.
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| March 1, 2018 |
FINALLY, in the middle of May we took advantage of the gorgeous weather
and began the process all over again,
this time with the benches.
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| May 12, 2018 |
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| July 3, 2018 |
By the beginning of July we were using both assembled benches.
Staining began July 3, and took a while because we could only do one bench at a time
so we could have a place to eat and do school.
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| July 3, 2018 |
August 1st was the magic day.
The table was done!
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| August 1, 2018 |
We had long begun incorporating this table with the many people that came in and out of our home.
They saw the whole process!
The good. The bad. The ugly.
The only way to hide this process was to shut the doors to our home,
and that simply wasn't going to happen.
And even though our table is done,
there are many more lessons to learn,
so much more refining to do,
any many, many more messes to clean up.
But you are welcome here.
Let's walk through it all together.
