I started hunting for Windsor chairs about a year ago and it took a few months to find a used set of birdcage Windsors I was happy with on craigslist. I did a bunch of experimenting with milk-paint and then refinished them. After refinishing them I think they worked well for this project. I think I’ll have to make my own chairs for the dining room table.

I started my table process over on Pinterest with just some ideas I liked. I modeled it all in sketchup to get rough ideas of joinery and dimensions.It took me a little over a month to build the table. I would say there is about 40-50 hours of woodworking and finishing into it. The top is about 50 board feet of Cherry finished with Shellac, Polyurethane, and wax. The base is made out of about 40 board feet of Ash that was died, painted with red milk paint, then black milk paint, then coated with danish oil and wax.My goal was to have it done by thanksgiving. It was done but the top was still in the workshop and we ended up eating at the relatives house so it wasn’t needed for thanksgiving dinner. Sabrina helped my bring the top in last night and we ate leftovers as a family on it… so it counts! :)One of the great things about building your own furniture is you can design it to fit a space exactly!Hopefully this table will see many happy family dinners for decades and maybe even centuries to come.

Here is a gallery of the table in progress: