My kitchen has a long, wide stretch right down the centre of it between the oven and the sink…
just begging for a Refectory Table.
Those lovely long slabs of scrubbed wood found in country house kitchens, boys’ schools, or monasteries bring back wonderful memories of baking pies, steaming broth, and endless cups of tea.
Hubs and I made do with our butcher block getting lost in the open space for almost a year while we hunted for reclaimed wood, mulled over ideas for a base and researched natural finishes.
We rescued some wood from a seventy year old chicken coop that had been torn apart and piled into a heap for burning
And Hubs started work immediately.
He trimmed and sanded five nine foot boards, glued them together and recessed wooden dowels on the underside to keep them in place. He filled cracks and holes and finished off the two ends with hand hewn trim and invited me to view it.
“Beautiful!” I said, and it was. Smooth as silk to the touch, a beautiful honey color, bearing no resemblance to the old pieces of wood we’d hauled from the farm down the hill a few months ago…
…with narry a nail in sight.
“I think it may be too narrow,” I said, “How does it compare to the width of our dining table?”
Hubs just looked at me and I went to research table widths.
Our dining table is 32 1/2 inches and the one Hubs had built was 24 inches. I carried two large plates out to the pavilion and together we set them opposite each other and amicably agreed that it really needed to be one board wider.
“I’ll be very happy with 29 inches,” I said with a grin.
“Well, I only want you to be happy,” he replied good naturedly.
He added a sixth board, re-did the trim at either end and all was much better!.
Then the finishing with Briwax began and after half a dozen layers, carefully applied and hand buffed, it began to gleam.
We still hadn’t decided what we wanted to set it on.
“We’ll know when we see it…” we re-assured each other as the weeks turned into months and Easter came and went.
We didn’t want to obstruct seating so an old dresser at each end wouldn’t work, four legs were too traditional, a trestle was predictable and we couldn’t get away with one pedestal…
…Hubs made a bench while we waited.
Finally he decided to use a couple of large remnants of pine he had salvaged from a friend’s house a few hundred acres away.
He made sure it was the right height and went off to a local shop to have several pieces of sheet metal custom cut for the project.
He clad the wooden beams with the metal, used horse shoe nails to attach it to the wood, added crescent stabilizers on the inside of the two legs and ran a final board between them.
He painted them copper and glued carpet scraps to the bottom.
As you may have guessed with all that wood-age it weighs a ton and we carried it into the house from the pavilion bit by bit then re-assembled it in situ.
Just in time for memorial day!
Isn’t it beautiful?
Mismatched chairs add to the charm, the one at this end is from an estate sale, the other three are from a farmhouse in France which we bought from our upstairs neighbor in London and the bench is hiding on the other side!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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