Hello! Victoria here, for my first ever blog post and I promise its going to be a good’un (all about our DIY dining table for our latest HMO project).
As most of you will be aware, we are (finally) approaching the end of our 9 bed HMO project on Churchgate, and I’ve been duly appointed as head of procurement (“Chief Shopper”)!
The main selling point for this project is the communal space, as we have 6 cellar chambers all dedicated to communal living, including a cinema room and a separate utility room.
We’ve gone for an industrial vibe (think white subway tiles with grey grout, utensils hanging off the walls, metal shelving etc.) and I had my heart set on a large industrial solid wood dining table to fit in with this.
However, a quick google search revealed to me that an 8 person solid wood table (I know we’ve got 9 tenants, I’m just taking a punt on them not eating at the same time every night) was going to cost upwards of £600 for something half decent, plus take 4-6 weeks to arrive.
Now Mike laughs/moans at the amount of time I spend on Instagram, but I think I shall forever have this victory to hold over his head, as about a week ago I spotted an interiors blogger talking about a DIY scaffolding table (see her post here) and realised it was absolutely perfect for what we were after.
Mike, on the other hand took some convincing. Admittedly, I have been the one telling him to delegate more, however I think now it’s complete and he realises a)how easy it was, and
b) how much he enjoyed it, he is prepared to utter the immortal “Victoria, you were right” words.
So without further ado, our table:
DIY Dining Table Materials
- 4 x 2.4m Scaffolding Boards – £13 per board (however as we were unloading our haul, our plumber turned round and said “I’ve got a load you could have had for free…” so check with your trades first)
- 2 pieces of 2 by 2 timber – £4
- Colron Wood Dye in colour “Refined Walnut” – £9.62
- Colron Lacquer Clear – £16.92
- Spax Flat Screws – £6.78
- 2 x Ikea Finnvard Legs in white – £25 per leg
Total cost: £143.32
Homemade Dining Table Process
We (Mike) sanded down the 4 boards using his belt sander. We removed the metal edges, as whilst we liked the look of them, they were quite sharp and we didn’t want a tenant cutting themselves.
Next, he attached the 2 by 2 timber battens underneath with large wood screws to hold the whole thing together.
From here we did one coat of the dye (it said to apply with a cloth, but we used a paintbrush without any issues) and let that dry overnight, followed by two coats of the lacquer.
Finally we attached the legs. Now had this been going in my own house, I would have likely trawled antique fairs looking for some snazzy vintage legs, however reminding myself this was all about efficiency and economies, I found a set of trestle legs in Ikea for £25 that I actually quite liked.
Et Voila!
If you take away the time debating should we/shouldn’t we and waiting for paint to dry (literally not metaphorically), I would say it was about 6 hours total effort, and in my humble opinion we’ve ended up with something that’s both pretty impressive and actually ridiculously cheap.
That’s all for now, hope some of you find this useful. Mike has also vlogged the process, which you can watch here…