Reclaimed Oak Bar Table
It will now be known as That %*&$ Table.
It was one of those projects. If it could go wrong, it did, and then some.
We're never getting rid of this table. It went so over budget, and it's stupid.
Ok, I might be done throwing my minor tantrum.
I am thrilled over the finished product. It's exactly what we wanted and performed beautifully at super bowl. Getting to the finished stage was heart wrenching, hair pulling, and nail bitingly difficult.
It all went fine until it was time to pour the resin. Construction went as expected. Staining the oak went well. We decided on a pickled oak color to bring out the graining, but not alter the color too much.
Stupid resin had to go and ruin it all.
Now this isn't the first time that we've used resin. We poured a resin work area over some pennies on the bar last year. I should really do up a post about that. I don't know why we didn't recall what we'd done with that work area. It really would've saved us some stress.
Well, because we didn't remember what we did to leak proof the bar table, I turned to google and did some searches. Everything I found said that silicone caulk wouldn't work, because the resin wouldn't stick to it and it'd recede (LIARS!). If only I'd remembered that that was exactly how we leak-proofed the bar top!
Instead we used wood filler and 5-minute epoxy. We filled the knots and holes we knew went through to the underside of the table with the 5-minute epoxy, and it worked beautifully. We even were able to highlight a screw that was in one of the boards. You can see from the last picture in the above collage, the bottom of said screw and where some of the resin dripped through and off the table.
We taped along the underside, just in case. Now some of the drips we had would've still happened, because I didn't realize some of the pin holes went all the way through the wood, and that one of the knots I filled with 5-minute epoxy wasn't completely filled, but even if they had still leaked and nothing else did, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
Instead, when the hubs poured the first 2 quarts of resin onto the table, at least a quart of it ended up on the blanket we had underneath the table, and the consequently soaked through into the carpet underneath. Yay! Now we need to fix the carpet. Awesome. The tape didn't stop anything.
After this happened, we caulked the crap out of the table, but of course, the caulk exploded inside the caulk gun so we ended up scraping the caulk from the tube with our fingers and plastic knives. The caulk worked for all, but 3 of the drips and they weren't bad. However, the resin didn't reach the top of the apron. I figured that one more quart would be enough. It wasn't. We had ridges from where the resin wouldn't self-level. Argh!
Hubs did another google search and found out that we can wet sand the resin and then top it off with a light coat of gloss polyurethane. This was after the resin had cured, so we had to wait 3 days. The hubs got sanding. A lot. He got the table almost perfectly smooth, and topped it off with a light coat of poly. The next morning, I went down and lightly sanded the top with super fine grit sandpaper and then after vacuuming and dusting the top, put another light coat of poly on the stupid table.
It was done. We let it dry for another day, and then we went about removing the resin from the parts of the table that it didn't need to be. Hurray for hammers and paint scrapers. It was mildly satisfying to attack the table during this stage. Another light sanding, then cleaning all that up. Time to prep the pine for stain. I applied some pre-stain wood conditioner, and then stained the table in an ebony finish.
The stain didn't take as evenly as I may have liked, but at this point I was done with this table. I was not staining it again. I was running out of time before the Super Bowl. I made the executive decision that the splotchy unevenness of the stain worked with the style of the table and could be classified as rustic (that's what I'm going with) so I left it and then applied the matte polyurethane.
I've never been more happy to see a project get done.
We got three saddle stools for seating, and then I spent at least half of the game at this table - enjoying telling friends about how I came about the wood, and its story. It almost made me forget about the hellish time we had finishing it. Almost.
I will say the pain of this table is receding, and despite all of its problems, I'm really proud of the hubs and I and how we overcame the issues that came up.
Cheers everyone!
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