The Home and Garden outdoor furniture we had was wonderful but we came home one day to the glass tabletop shattered in a million pieces all over the patio. There was no way I was just going to discard the whole set, so I decided to do a little DIY to give my table new life.
Here's the original:
(I wish my backyard looked like this)
Materials:
10- 2x4x8's non treated and I picked out the "good" looking ones
some sort of support boards (I used 2 1x2x6 foot boards, but I might suggest going with 2 1x4x6's instead)
1 1/4" exterior deck screws
metal jigsaw blade
Preparation:
The original table has metal "tabs"that were supporting the glass table top. These will need to be cut off. I purchased a couple of blades for the jigsaw that cut through metal. I tried to cut off as much of the tab as possible right to the inside edge of the table. Most of the tabs, though, still had 1/8 to 1/4" left, so this will need to be factored into the length of the boards cut.
I figured out that I was right at 36" (a nice even number) and only 1 board of all of them was a snug fit. To make measuring and fitting easier, I turned the table upside down and laid the boards in place as I cut them. I was mindful to make sure that the "pretty side" was face down so that it would be the surface board when you turned the table over.
It took a total of 19 boards, cut at 36" each to fill the space perfectly. The table length (inside the frame) was 68 1/4" with a little room at the ends where the tabs were cut off. This meant that there needed to be a very slight amount of space in between each board- so small an amount, in fact, that I used a piece of thin cardboard and it was the perfect amount of spacing.
While it is laying upside down and fitted perfectly, this would be the time to run support boards along the length of the tabletop (they are not shown above). I put 1 screw in each support board into the table top (11/4" exterior deck screws actually) and then on the end boards, I put 2 screws so that the table wasn't able to pivot or move much. This worked well, otherwise you'd have 70+ screws in the thing and, frankly, I think that affects the integrity of it all.
Due to the structure of the inner frame of the table, the corners of the new table needed to be cut off so it gives it an angled look. Just a little bit of character added to the already charming feel of it all!
Once finished, I put a Minwax finish on it- not gonna lie, I saw this is the "get rid of it" pile at Lowes and a quart was 3$, so score... It's not the most awesome color for this project, but I knew ultimately I would put a dark shade over it for that rustic feel, so I went with it. If all else failed with the look, I could just cover it with a darker shade.
So this is the finished product. I took a dark walnut stain I also had in the garage and brushed over the lighter shade and thinned it out. I tried to alternate the brush strokes from one side of the table to the other. Ultimately though, this is supposed to look rustic and weathered, so there should be little continuity to it to give it that feel.
When the grass comes in (it's dormant right now) and I pull out all the cushions, I'll be excited to post a picture with the table all "decorated and blog worthy". Stay tuned... and stop throwing stuff away! This went from 'eh' to 'wow' for just about 30$ and an hour and a half of your time.
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