A Recycled Work Bench Top turns into a Super Cool Kitchen table

Our youngest is moving into an unfinished apartment, and his brother already raided the basement for a bunch of furniture for his first grown up apartment, so we had to get creative….

I used to have a workbench in the garage at the farm and then in the basement in this house. Recently, it had become a dumping ground, so we donated the cabinets, but kept the wood top that Mike had made for it out of some wood we had. I never liked the finish that he put on it (and neither did he), so he got out the belt sander and took the finish off.

I really liked it just like this, but it wasn’t practical for a kitchen table. Mike routed the edges so that they wouldn’t have such a sharp corner on them and put lots and lots of polyurethane on it to fill the pores.

We had to find some legs that we could put on the table, so I went to hairpinlegs.com and found some really cool industrial looking ones.

I wiped down the legs with paint thinner and sprayed them with laquer to give them a protective coating. These legs have a place for a stretcher to provide additional strength and rigidity. Mike found an old board with lots of character in the wood shed, so he jointed it and routed the edges and put lots of polyurethane on it.

I love the live edge on it. Then it was time to assemble the whole thing.

We have disassembled it for moving to save room, and to prevent hernias. It is REALLY heavy. Our son is super excited about it and loves how it turned out.