It's Finished!

My half project is pretty much finished!  And since I made you guys wait a whole day wondering what on earth this was going to be (I'm so sorry if it kept you up at night!), I'll let you know what I made with these boards: a tabletop!

These boards are 1x4's and 6' long. I sanded them down and rounded the edges (think picnic table here) and then stained them Minwax Dark Walnut. The picture above is just one coat of stain, which wasn't as dark as I liked, so I did another coat.

You can see in the picture below how much of a difference a second coat makes.

 

Next, I polyurethaned them. I was thinking of doing a glossy finish, but I wanted this to look rustic, so I went against my better judgement a did a satin finish. I loved how it looked while the poly was wet, but once it dried, it just looked too flat and boring. After that, I decided to gloss it up a bit and I did 3 more coats of semi-gloss, which really brought out the the warmth of the wood and made it look much richer (not money-wise, but you know what I mean =) ).

(Sorry about the glare, but the garage doesn't have the best lighting)

I used 10 boards for the tabletop and my dad cut 2 cross pieces for the bottom and screwed them in underneath.

He cut them a little shorter than the length of the table and angled them so they wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb.  I still need to clean up the underside and poly it, but it's pretty much done! And it was so super duper easy to make =)

Sorry I can't show you the whole thing, but the base I am using is in storage in NJ. I'll be doctoring that up too once I get there. Stay tuned - I think you'll like it!