What a table can do

When you only have one work surface -- and that's theoretically where you eat too -- then usually something has to be displaced. Normally, around my apartment, the displaced thing is me. Meaning that the table is full of projects and I'm eating in my chair in the living room. Which was depressing. I equate being bored or lonely with eating in the recliner in front of the television. Maybe it's just a stereotype that plays in my head. But it was such an incredible pain in the butt to clean off the table, put away half-finished projects only to pull them out again days later, that the recliner/TV combo usually won out.

So one day a couple of months ago, I had this idea. Most of my space planning ideas result in making a huge mess, moving a lot of furniture, and then leaving things all over for months at time while the details get taken care of. This time wasn't much different. Started in April; finished in July. A workspace.

This is possibly the coolest organizational thing I've ever come up with. 107 inches of counter top. And all of it almost unobstructed by supports. Not having my own fix-it guy nearby, I asked a friend's husband to make it for me. I knew he was something of a perfectionist, but until we got involved with this project, I didn't realize how far that went.

One look at the space and he had decided that buying lumber wasn't good enough. Because it wouldn't be thick enough to support the expanse without a lot of legs under the table. So he had the lumber milled. Like go to a saw mill and talk to the guys....find a log....have the board cut. Two inches thick. I think I could stand on this thing and it wouldn't bend. (Although I don't plan to try. That would be tempting fate.) Then there was the issue of stain. I would have been happy with paint and a sealer. Although I could see the point: if you're hand picking wood, having it milled, letting it dry for four weeks, and then sanding it, you might want to see the wood. It looks black in the photo - but it's really stained to EXACTLY match (close enough was not acceptable) the two IKEA cabinets I bought to be the supports. The stain of course was custom mixed.

In honor of the new work surface, I've been bending wire and stringing beads. Here are the results:

So, you might ask, is eating at the dining room table all I'd hoped it would be? I don't know yet. It's still covered with knitting, a paper filing project, and magazines.