herringbone – 31 Downing Street

During this time of social distancing, I can’t help but think about how one day soon, we will be able to gather again with family and friends around our new dining table. The idea for this table came with much thought; how I could make something beautiful, yet not spend a fortune in doing so. For years I have wanted to build a dining table, and I only needed to make a table top since I had acquired pedestals taken off an old table I purchased from a thrift store for only thirty bucks! The top of the table, however, was not to my liking so I tossed the top and began to think up ways to create a top that would suite my style. There are thousands of DIY tables on Pinterest that are beautiful and unique, and while I have taken some inspiration from many of those, I also wanted to design the top in my own way, to my own personal liking. Originally, I had wanted to use huge reclaimed beams sliced in half to make a top with a lot of character and warmth. The pictures below show something similar to what my inspiration was if you combine the two.

As I sourced reclaimed lumber, I learned very quickly I wouldn’t be getting wood for cheap any time soon. Most beams run about $10-$25 per board foot, which is the length x height x wide. So, when a board is four to six inches thick, eight feet long, and a foot wide, things add up quickly. I was looking at $500+ dollars just in the lumber alone, and then I would have had to pay someone to slice it up into thinner pieces, since my table saw wouldn’t have cut it… pun intended!

I figured enough was enough, and needed to put those pedestals to use and just come up with a new design altogether. They had been stashed away in the furnace room, taking up what precious little space we have of storage in there. But, even more so than using the pedestals, I needed to get rid of our old, worn out table that had taken much abuse over the last 15 years. It was a cheap buy from a furniture store, purchased for our first home when we got married, and though it is structurally sound, it was time for something new!

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My house was built in the mid-90s, the era of when pink and orange-y oak was on trend. We bought our house as a foreclosure, and pretty much nothing had been updated since it was built. This was totally ok with us, since we wanted a house to renovate to our own taste. When choosing what to redo first, we had to put things on a list of priorities, because it all needed fixing. Bathrooms came first on that list. We did our master bathroom first because it was in the worst shape. Next on the list was the powder bathroom. The toilet had obviously been leaking because the laminate flooring had a big black stain around the left side of the toilet. Gross. The layout of the bathroom was awkward, as well. When you walked in, there was little space to get in and close the door due to a huge counter and the toilet being on the wall facing the door. It seemed like poor planning, but I guess if we had wanted a whole bunch of counter space to display things in our powder bathroom, it would have been great. We did not, so things had to change completely. It also was not well lit, even though it had the iconic 8 bulb bar light, trying its best to make it bright. Last, was the ceiling height. They had made a drywall detail, similar to a tray ceiling, around the walls where it met the ceiling. However, it came down a foot, almost touching the top of the door frame. So, this made it feel like it had very low ceilings, even though it was an 8 foot ceiling. I drew up some sketches of how I wanted things to look, and off we went finding materials to fit the design.

Here are my almost before shots and a picture of the drywall detail after it was torn off. (I got eager again! But I remembered to snap photos before it was totally stripped down to the studs):