Inspiration

Yesterday, I told you how we have a pretty awesome DIY project in the works. Well, today, I'm going to share with you our inspiration... but first a back story.

Our dining room table has been very well loved. We got it in a scratch and dent section of a furniture store (at which point it was brown), had it for a few years, put a pretty good size steam stain in it about three years ago, and then painted it white. Well, now that white paint is staining and peeling and it is impossible to make it look clean. I'm getting tired of feeling embarrassed every time someone new comes to the house and sits down at the table. On top of this, the table doesn't really seem right for the space. Without the leaf it feels way to small, but with the leaf in it makes the walkways feel tight. So, for the past few weeks, I've been looking around for a new table.... a round table.

 After much searching, I kept coming back to these two tables:

They are both from restoration hardware. Now I love restoration hardware. Unfortunately, I cannot afford basically anything inside the store. As it turns out, any round table I found that I loved was way out of the price range (I don't care how much I love something... $2000 is gonna make me hate it) and each table I found that I liked had an aspect that I wasn't crazy about.

This is what inspired us to make our own table. Consider the two tables above to be our table's parents. We're taking aspects from each, throwing in a few unique qualities and calling it our own.

Here is a run down of the features ours will have:

• Legs similar to table #1 but six instead of four... more on why later
• Top similar to table #2 but a little more finished... I don't want to have crumbs accumulating in cracks
• Expandable... We have a huge Thanksgiving party each year and we want to accommodate a lot of people.
• Pretty large... Just over 60"diameter... Closed it should fit 8 and should fill our dining room space better.
• Not round... for a few reasons, we decided to make our table an octagon instead of a circle.

So do you want a sneak peak of our table? Here is half of the table during a dry fit (aka nothing is finished)

We're pretty excited! This was a true test of our skills since we we didn't use plans or instructions of any kind.... just a lot of brainstorming, calculations and patience... lots and lots of patience.

Next week we'll show you how we put everything together and hopefully a finished product!