Farmhouse Table Plan – 5 Years Later

I recently got a question from one of my readers about how the Farmhouse Table has held up over time.  It’s been 5 years since I built mine and so I thought I’d share the good, the bad & and ugly!

Overall, this table for us has held up really well.  In my original post on building the plan, I described using construction grade lumber from Lowes and went over the details of building it, so you can see there how I constructed and finished it.

We’ve used it as our family kitchen table, and with 4 children, teen agers & a dog that likes to jump up on it when we’re not looking, it’s taken a lot of abuse over the years!  But it has been the centerpiece of our kitchen and we still love it, especially when it’s clean.  We’ve also kept it in a pretty stable environment as far as humidity goes, so we haven’t seen a lot of expansion and contracting of the wood, although I’ve had some hairline cracks in the wood filler between a couple of the boards.  I do think this can potentially be a real issue for folks, so I’ve recommended using an alternative method of securing the table top to the base to minimize this.

The part that has taken the most abuse is actually the bench.  It’s been knocked over numerous times (and you should hear the pounding noise when that happens!), had lots of kids crammed on it, been walked on, had the ends stood on and jumped off of – drives me crazy – and generally been subjected to a lot of wear and tear.  Around the end boards, some of the wood filler has been knocked out and it’s the piece that’s been scratched up the most.

Both the table and bench are pine, which is a soft wood, so they will get scratched.  If you don’t want a scratch on this table (and you have kids) don’t build it!  I supposed you could find oak lumber or some other hardwood, but that would probably cost as much as buying a table like this at Pottery Barn.

Besides, it’s supposed to look rustic, so that fits in well with our family… we’ve done our best to beat it up and ensure that it stays looking that way!

The bottom line for us is that this table, when it was all said & done with wood, hardware, finishing supplies and a couple tools that I bought to do the job, probably ran me around $300 plus a pretty good bit of my time.  That’s pretty cheap for a table that gets the kind of compliments we get and for something that can take a real pounding.  That’s worked out to about $60 per year (I think of stuff like that… weird, I know), and I’ve always thought that it’s been a good deal for the amount of use we’ve gotten out of it.  And we’ve got no intention of replacing it anytime soon.

Here’s a series of photos of how it’s held up.

As I mentioned above, the table has a few hairline cracks in the wood filler between a couple of the boards.  I’m pretty sure this is due to some expansion and because I screwed the top into the base instead of using this alternate method (which is how I build and attach tops on more recent projects).

This happened in 2 places on the table.  One of them, I scraped out and covered with additional wood filler a couple years ago and that fixed the problem.

But generally speaking, the table top has held up pretty well.

It does have it’s fair share of scratches from daily usage.  There’s not much I can do about Sharpie marker except refinish the top.  Seems like it’s more work than worth the benefit, at least right now!

The bench has been subject to most of the destructive forces in our home.  Where the end boards attach to the seat boards, I’ve lost a good bit of the wood filler, but that has been because rowdy children plop down on the very end of the bench and it’s been knocked over more times than my eardrums (and our floor) care to remember.  I could easily patch this up, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet.

But with all the knocks and bruises, this table has served us solidly for a number of years and I think it still looks great in the kitchen (guests tend to agree, at least that’s what they tell us to our face…).

Would I build it again?  Absolutely!  I love the look & design of the piece, it’s heavy and durable and even though it’s a fraction of the cost of buying one from Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware, the satisfaction of having built it myself is a lot more than just saving a few bucks.

If you want to build one for yourself, head over to this post for detailed start-to-finish plans.

If you like this table, you can head over to the original blog post and check it out or purchase my ‘easy formatted’ PDF print version for $5.

The print version also includes the accompanying bench as well as a handy shopping list, cut list and lots of diagrams of the project (it’s about 20 pages in all).  You certainly don’t need it to build the table, but if you want a nicely formatted printout to use in your workshop/basement/garage and to take to Home Depot or Lowes when shopping for supplies, you might consider it.