When I bought our house in 2015 I was given some furnitures from our neighbors, one was a big table from IKEA and I thought it would be a great solution until I found one that I really wanted. I didn´t like it´s colour so as many other furnitures in this house I repainted it with Annie Sloans chalk paint (french linen and dark wax).

If you want to learn how to paint with chalk paint you can look at some tips in my previous post.

I liked it much better with it´s new colour but haven´t been satisfied with it since the dream was a big rustic wooden table. Last week after looking at many beautiful homes on instagram I got an idea that it would look good with slates on it´s tabletop. I however realized that I wanted a wooden table and decided to instead use some leftover materials from our renovation. Much cheaper for both the wallet and the environment.

Before

So Elli and I went out on the morning and started to collect wood boards from diffrent piles. Thought of using old pallets to but since it was quite cold to work outside I decided not to (didn´t want to drag them in to the house). Carried in the boards, cleaned them from snow, ice, dried grass and then started to lay a puzzle. If you want to do this yourself please think about trying out your pieces in every step before finally attaching them.

Elli and me collecting wood boards in our garden

Fitting boards to the tabletop

Fitting the boards

Morran helping out

I choose to attach the wood when it was still wet, this is not to recommend if you want a flat tabletop and don´t want to risk the wood to crack. Wood is a living material and as you probably know it shrinks when it dries. I was willing to take the chance since I wanted a rough look. I marked where I was going to cut them of, cutted them and made sure that they still did a nice fit after the cutting. Screwed the pieces to the table with screws that was long enough to go through both the boards and halfway through the old tabletop, if you want to do this yourself it´s important to not use to long screws since they then will go through your old tabletop and go out underneath your table (might cause damage on clothes/pets/small children).

All pieces attached

After sanding

Then I let the wood dry. If you look at the pictures above and the once of the finished result you will see that there now is gaps between the boards caused by the shrinking of the wood.

This is how it looked the first day before the wood had dried.

Sanded down the worst parts on the wood, not much since I did not wanted to ruin the patina. Some of it disappeared and I had to paint some fake patina. This can be done in many ways. Since this wood already had patina I used some things from my pantry: instant coffee dissolved in water to create some brown shades and a black colour for coloring food (karamellfärg) to create grey and black shades. I use a scotch brite to rub both the solutions in and then let it dry.

Creating more patina

Time to oil/wax

First layer

Second layer

When it had dried I added one layer of my favorite wood treatments that is Osmo hårdvaxolja. I dont know the english name but it is a mix of wax and oil that is magical to treat wood with, wood wax oil maybe? I added the first layer since I wanted to protect the patina before sanding it again. When dried I sanded the wood with a fine grained sandpaper and added another layer. Before finish it of with another layer I took a scotch brite and rubbed the surface a little bit to make it a bit smoother.

A pic to show that the tabletop is in more then one part since it would be hard to move it somewhere else otherwise.

And here is the final result. I really love it and now I don´t need to buy a new one!