Reclaimed wood dining table

When we were looking for houses, one of Mark's top criteria was a huge dining room. We host nearly every holiday and we dreamed of a day everyone could actually sit down to eat (and not on the couch).

Once we started taking wood out of the walls, we knew we wanted to eventually incorporate those 100+ year old beams into the dining table. We pulled them out and put them in the garage, and they waited for us for a year and a half.

Eventually we came to inherit a dining table from Mark's side of the family. The base was solid, but the top had a veneer that was warped and stained. We decided to use it as our starting point for our reclaimed wood table. I started by disassembling the base and stripping all the finish off of it. It was very dark and waxy to the point of being sticky. I used citristrip and a scraper and after a few applications on each piece, the finish slowly came off to expose a beautifully smooth, light-colored wood.

I sanded each piece lightly and sealed with a coat of Danish oil. That brought the color back into the wood a little bit and gave it a beautiful sheen.

The base was reassembled.

Now that the easy part was over, we started the table top. We brought those old red oak beams out of the garage and pulled out a hundred years worth of nails.

The beams were incredibly rough and varied in width and depth by up to an inch. Mark milled each one down on a table saw so that they were all roughly the same size. Using a piece of finish-grade red oak plywood as the main part of the table top, we fitted an old beam to each side like a picture frame. We used a router to make a channel to fit the plywood piece into them and nailed and wood glued the whole thing together.

A few supports were added into the middle to keep the table top stable.

We took the pieces off the bottom of the old table top to attach to the base, and attached them to the bottom of our table top, then bolted the new top onto the base. Once it looked like everything was lined up and fit properly, we took the top off the base again and took it outside for sanding. I didn't want to sand the character out of those side beams, so I just sanded them to the point that you wouldn't get splinters. I still wanted to see the lath lines and nail holes.

We needed a LOT of wood filler at this point. While we had tried to mill those beams down so that they would fit perfectly, there were still a ton of places where there were gaps between that plywood and the old beam. I mixed wood glue and sawdust from the old beams to make a wood filler, and used a putty knife to get it into every little crack. Then, more sanding.

I had to sand again after the wood filler was dry to make sure we had a smooth transition between the two woods that made up the table top. When all was good, I sealed the top with three coats of Waterlox.

This table seats twelve and in the few weeks it has been done, we have hosted dinners that fill it up more than once. I love the feel of the old wood now that is has been protected by the waterlox. It still has its texture but is free of sharp edges and splinters. It just feels like it has been under hand for 100 years and I love all of its character and imperfections.