Life

The tomatoes were drying up pretty badly at the end of summer but now that San Antonio has decided that it’s finally fall, they are coming back like crazy. Today I had to build some new supports for the vines. They were growing to the ground over the old trellis and the weight of the fruit was tough on the vines. I improvised some supports with some scrap wood. I picked all the ripe fruit before taking these pictures, so all that you will see is a whole lot of green fruit.

So yesterday I made sure to be all set up to leave work right on time. As I got out to the parking lot, I saw a coworker trying desperately to get her car to work. There was another coworker using her phone, trying to read over some directions to fix things. I decided to help out also. Apparently the gear shifter was stuck. After checking a few things we ended up deciding it was the brake shift interlock that was the problem. Luckily I like to be prepared. In my trunk I had a flat head screw driver that made it easy to depress the manual release for the  brake shift interlock. I let her borrow my screw driver in case she needed it driving home. Today she returned the screw driver with a thank you note and gift card. The gift card was actually unnecessary but appreciated. I was just glad to help out.

I wasn’t quite happy with our old table so I decided to build a new one. I looked around and decided to build a “farmhouse table”.

Step 1. Research.

I looked at over a dozen designs and tutorials from websites like Ana-White.com and YouTube.

Step 2. Draw up a plan.

So I didn’t go with a pre-made plan but bits and pieces of other plans make up what mine ended up being.

3. Buy the lumber. I went to Lowes for the lumber and had them cut all the lumber. I had the number of pieces and lengths planed ahead to make the task easy. One Newb mistake I made was not realizing that they did not cut 4×4’s. I ended up going over budget by choosing turned legs as replacements but I have to admit they do look better.

4. I laid all the lumber out in the kitchen to build the table. It’s hot in Texas this time of year. I wasn’t going to hang out in the garage that long. Sarah took Joseph to the zoo and then the mall so that I could have the space to myself.

I also turned on Patton to have playing in the background. It helped make sure the requisite testosterone level was met in the house. I’ll also note here that those beautiful table legs were a pain in the butt to drill in and place screws. I’m not sure what wood they are but it’s much harder than the white pine I used in the rest of this project. Here are a couple more in progress pictures:

 

5. After building the frame of the table I turned it upright and placed the boards for the top on. I just screwed the boards down and made sure to countersink the screws. I then placed wood filler in the holes and let that dry for a few hours.

6. Later in the evening I painted the legs white and stained the table top. I turned on some fans to help get some air movement to dry out the project.

 

Friday night I called about some wood chairs advertised on Craigslist. I ran out to Boerne on Saturday morning to pick them up. I also placed our old dining table on Craigslist and had a buyer by Saturday morning. They stopped by Saturday evening to pick it up. It can be a little weird buying/selling something to a complete stranger on Craigslist. Luckily this is Texas so I was discreetly armed and aware each time and luckily the weapon wasn’t needed. They were really nice each time. I’ve had a few people that seemed pretty sketchy in the past.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how the table turned out. My next big project will be sanding and painting the chairs. We are planning on painting them green to be a bright match to an accent color that is in our downstairs area.