made by hand

When we decided we were going to buy a house, we determined we wanted to build a table to put in it.  I wanted an artisan farm table with a lot of heart, but we don't exactly have the cash to buy one, so we decided to do it ourselves.  My mom's cousin (I guess that makes him my cousin too) has a mill in Pennsylvania where my parents have gotten wood before, so we asked him for some oak boards.  On Christmas, they arrived, and we hauled them to the lake to get to work.  It's a long table, because I wanted to be able to serve dinner to many friends at once (though as you can see, we're still lacking a little in the seating department).  While my dad and Evin did most of the work with power tools, cutting and drilling and assembling, I handled a large part of the finishing (stain and poly).  The apron and legs are hard to see, but they're stained a muted green.  We plan to finish the chairs (which we got at an unfinished furniture store not far from our new house) in the same way, with brown and muted green stain, we just haven't gotten there yet!  I am very proud of our handmade table and I know in the future, we are going to have to buy or build a dining room to accommodate it, because it's going to stick around for a very long time!