Introducing: The Big Clamp

How did the headboard turn out? I'm glad you asked!



I love it. I even *heart* it. We might be going steady, me and my headboard. It got one more coat of stain after this and then it got moved into it's happy home in our bedroom. It's gorgeous and it makes me happy every time I look at it.

So! On to the kitchen table. My original plans were for the Rustic Table but I wanted different legs. Also, my father loaned me his Kreg Jig, so it was suddenly possible to attach the apron to the legs at the sides.

I got all the holes drilled, the legs attached, the apron assembled, and then I got it set in the kitchen to make sure it was the right size.

I'm not sure if I thought we would be feeding the Partridge family or what, but that table was WAY too big for us. And that's *after* I whacked a bunch off the original measurements in the plans. So I whacked some more off. And then I realized that I needed to shorten the ends as well, which involved drilling out the putty and *then* whacking some more off. Finally it's all the right size and the unassembled wood sits in the kitchen taunting me for a week while we unpacked and unpacked and unpacked (and we're not done yet).

Last weekend Steve went off to a camping trip ahead of me and I took advantage of the evening to myself to lay out the pieces and paint them. I wanted a dark stained top and a white base so I put a coat on and decided to go to bed and let it really dry before putting another coat on and letting it finish drying while I went camping.

Then I came back down to get myself some water and I turned on the lights and damned if there wasn't a moth dying in my fresh paint. Just laying on his back flapping around in the Valspar Eggshell Interior Deluxe. I freed him to the best of my ability, redid that bit, and called it a night.

When I got home from camping I did the assembly and got the top attached. And then I detatched and reattached the top. Twice. And then I realized I had a seriously swoopy board in there somewhere. Also that I don't put enough "sink" in my countersink holes. I made a shopping list to remedy some of my issues and put an initial coat of stain on it and went to bed.

Here it is that night:


OMG stop looking at how messy my kitchen is! I swear we've made progress! Anyway, at this point I went to bed.

The next day I went to the Big Orange Store and got clamps big enough to hold down the swoopy board, longer screws, wood putty, all that good stuff.

Oh, Wood Putty, I love you best of all.


By the time the putty got put on I'd already clamped down the edges and really gotten rid of the gaps, put the correct size screws in, all that good stuff. Sometimes I'd bring the big clamp back out and show it to the table, just to scare it.

See the table quaking in fear? Wood trembles at the very approach of The Big Clamp.

Eventually I got it buffed, polished, smacked around, and more stain on it. Then I moved it outside. Because if it's going to be 90 around here, I'm going to take advantage of it.


Last night Steve and I had the discussion about whether or not it's done. It usually goes like this:

Me: I think it needs another coat of stain.
Steve: I think it's fine.
Me: You don't think it looks uneven?
Steve: No, honey, I think that's just the light.
Me: Well maybe just a touch-up on a couple of spots.
Steve: *twitch*

And then I wait until he goes to bed and I put some more stain on it anyway. Of course now I *have* to be done because I'm out of stain. Somewhere Steve is very happy. This is how it looked after the last stain coat. It'll get poly on the top and some putty/sanding/touchup paint on the base and it's done!


(You're looking at how messy the kitchen is, aren't you? You don't see the messy kitchen. You see only the gorgeous table. This is not the messy kitchen you're looking for. (I just made a big HTML nerd joke, I have no shame.)

Now we're on to the Rustic Media Center, the base of which you see trying to hide under the table in disguise as a bench. I think it's afraid of The Big Clamp.