Goodwill Pedestal Table

When my husband and I purchased the bulk of our furniture we were living in a rental. I have now discovered that is kind of a bad time to purchase big ticket items. The HUGE dining table and couches may not fit ANY OTHER house you live in.

So when we moved into the house that we live in now our humongous rectangle dining table was a tight fit to say the least. I really wanted a round pedestal table to fit the space better. Of course we had already spent our budget on a nice table so I had to find something affordable. That is where my favorite store the Goodwill comes into play. I found this table for $24, THAT IS RIGHT $24. There was no way I could not buy it. The only problem was it didn't have the leaf to make it as big as we needed. I thought I could probably make something.


Here is the space I needed to fill.


Here I am holding up what I plan to make into my "leaf".

You will notice there is a little bit of trim at the bottom. I looked all over for something to match, couldn't find it so I pulled it off.

I wasn't sure how to do it, but I just kind of had to wing it. Now that I have done a few projects, I probably would do somethings different. I would have used MDF and I wouldn't have used wood filler to try to make it look like there wasn't a leaf. It just made it incredible challenging and I think after all of the work, it might have looked better if I would have let it look like a leaf. A year later, and the wood filler has cracked and now it it looks kind of messy.

In the picture below you can see I filled the cracks to make it look like a solid surface.


I attached the "leaf" to the table using wood glue and brackets.


My next step was to borrow a router from our awesome Cousin Andy, and route around the whole table so the edges would match. Then I distressed it and painted it white.

Here you can see the routed edge, and the cracked wood glue. Speaking of a router I think it one is definitely going to go on my Christmas list. It was awesome.


It isn't perfect, but I really like it. Although now I am thinking I would like the table top be a nice dark wood so this might be an in-between makeover, ha ha ha.

Here is the only picture of the big rectangle table I could find. This was from Mother's Day 2009 breakfast, Mamosas and breakfast burritos (ya baby) so please excuse my all around look! It is funny to look at the stuff in the background and notice how much has changed--new mantle, tv, and layout!

Kind of funny story, last night as I was typing this post up my husband asked me what I was typing. My response "about the dining table". He shook his head, and I had to giggle--nothing like the excitement of a table!