My brother is awesome!

Jocelyn is turning 2 next Wednesday and we are bringing pizza to her classroom. I mentioned to my brother that I needed a flyer to hang up and within 2 hours he delivered this awesomeness!

Best Uncle Ever! 

My Pottery Barn Dining Table Knockoff.

I've always wanted a huge dining room table. Over the past few years I've stalked many blogs that made farmhouse tables (more specifically the Pottery Barn Benchwright). (See: Ana-White and here, Perfectly Imperfect, Contemporary Harbor and many many more.) I took in as much knowledge as I could and started forming a plan. (This plan included getting my dad on-board to help, but lucky for me he is always on-board for a building project.) All of the tables I read about were too small and they all faked the 4x4 through parts, I had to figure out how to make it nearly 9 feet long (ended up 8 feet 8 inches) and how to make the legs more legit. (Oh and for less than 300 bucks!)

I am super lucky to have such wonderful friends and family. It truly took a village to build this thing. <3

It all started in my friend Alan's cabinet shop where we (they: Alan, Dad and Chris) cut all the boards and used Alan's awesome skills to give this table an upgrade.
The upgrade started with Alan building a template.
After the template was built, Alan, Dad and Chris used a plunge router to create holes in the 4x4 legs to allow the cross piece in the legs to really go through, unlike many of the knockoffs we found. Chris gets a few bonus points for dedication to our project. He showed up in his dress clothes after a hard night of partying. :)
Then we took the boards back to our house where I began laying out the tabletop. Dad and I decided which boards worked best where. Once it was all set, I got to use my favorite building tool (the kreg jig) to drill a ton of pocket holes to join the boards together. Once the holes were all drilled, dad and I started joining boards with lots of glue and the pocket holes.

Then it looked like this! We were starting to get excited! Then I sanded. And sanded. And sanded.
And sanded a little more.

Next I started the finishing process on the bottom first:
2 coats of wood conditioner
2 coats of weathered oak
2 coats of special walnut
4 coats of poly

Then I got to do it all over again to the top.

Then to the legs...

Hey look, my turnbuckle came in the mail!!

Once the table was finished dad and Chris put the legs on. After that, they drilled holes and put the rods and turnbuckle on the bottom (that I had spray painted with a brown paint.) I got to supervise this part because Miles wanted nothing but his mommy at the time.
Holy crap it is done. We did it. We built a table.
And in time for Thanksgiving. Success!!! (14 people around that baby!)

All I can say is THANK YOU! THANK YOU! To Dad, Alan, Chris and Paul.

Paul is always a stanch supporter of my insane ideas and enables me to have the free-time to do these crazy things. Love you!

Dumpster Crates

It is no secret that our house is a lifetime project and if you've come to our house, you know it isn't decorated AT ALL. We've made a point to try to avoid putting too much pressure on ourselves and just do things as they come.

For a while, Jo has been utilizing a cardboard box in the living room as her toy chest. (Classy, I know.)

Might be ghetto but it is ADORABLY ghetto.

Fast forward a bit and dad found a bunch of free wood next to the dumpster by his condo. I thought it would be a perfect fit to make a few crates to store some of her toys. I didn't take any building pictures but here is one during painting. (Left over paint from the kid's table.)

And here is the finished product. (Finished is in italics because i have a couple ideas of things I might do to these still.)

While recovering from gallbladder surgery I...

About a month ago I had to have my gallbladder removed. This coincided with my last week of maternity leave and the first week the kids were back at daycare. The doctor said I should take it easy for a week. I asked for clarification of what that means. (Lay in bed for a week?) He said "Don't lift anything over 20lbs."

Awesome, I can do that. Dad and I decided to use some of my new found freedom to build some of the items on my ever growing list.

Dad's work didn't cooperate fully with our plans so I ended up building this baby all by myself. (Notice the beautiful kreg jig joined piece below the chair. It was eventually incorporated into a cat box enclosure for Miss Bella.)

It proved to be a little difficult (not impossible but frustrating) to put the chairs together alone so I waited on him to do the rest. I cut all the wood and then did other little projects around the house.

When he got home we proceeded to make a table to go with the chair and then put the other 3 chairs together.

Then I started the finishing process. (dad generally avoids these tasks. :) )

Jocelyn loves here new chalkboard table and chairs! :)

Plus, huge score on the rug. $6.99 at Ross. :)