We bought our first home in 2018, and like many others, the first thing we thought was, let’s go shopping!
Well, that’s what we though, but for us, that was not an actual reality after dishing out closing and down payment funds. So what did we do when we needed a dining room table at a reasonable cost? We DIY ourselves a farmhouse kitchen table. I began researching and found the amazing Ana White. Ana White provides free, printable, and easy to follow woodworking plans for hundreds of types of projects.
My husband and I used her “Beginner Farm Table” plans to build our farmhouse-style table. Link to the plans we used: https://www.ana-white.com/woodworking-projects/beginner-farm-table-2-tools-50-lumber
Ana states in the plans that only two tools (drill and a saw) and $50 are needed to build and complete the DIY farmhouse kitchen table and immediately my husband was skeptical.
TIP: Your local home improvement store will make cuts for you for free if you do not own a saw. Some policies charge .25-.50 cents per cut after two cuts.
We are not woodworkers by trade, so we were not sure if the tool assessment or cost was accurate. I said to my husband, we should go price the materials. We did just that at our local home improvement store, and the $50 cost was spot on (see editor’s note).
For us, all the lumber and screws were about $55 with local taxes. We had to buy stain and paint in the color we preferred, so that was an additional cost and if you do not have a drill, that will also be an expense. A drill will be cost worthy for future projects, if you plan to build other projects around your home, so consider it an investment.
Ana provides a cut list and specific instruction in each of her plans to make it simple to shop for what you will need at the home improvement store.
It took us a weekend to build the table. We sanded, stained, and painted over the next week. We let the table cure for about three days before we put it to use. We built the table inside the house, otherwise it would not fit through the doorway once we completed it. The length of the table is 8 feet, and width is about 4 feet. From start to finish, total completion time was 10 days, with having to go work in between.
Editors Note: This post was originally published August 19, 2019 and has been revamped and updated for comprehensiveness.
Our DIY farmhouse kitchen table is still our main dining table 5 years later, in 2024.
Sharonda Shariee - Curating a Life Well-Lived 