Easter Sunday

All the family is coming over for Easter Sunday and a potluck lunch - dinner will come together.  But we need a place to sit and enjoy.  The trouble is my teak patio table from Target only seemed to last 2 years and is now ready to be repurposed into something else.  I think if I sneeze it will blow over.  In shopping around for a large patio table at Home Depot or the DIY Center everything is super expensive, and will it hold up?  Why not try and build it myself?  I love the big farm house table design, plus I have a big backyard and patio so a big table would look fine.  Looked at a few ideas on You Tube and penciled out a game plan for materials.  Called up my good buddy Jacobus, said he'd be happy to lend a hand, and it was off to Home Depot to fill my shopping list.  4x4's for the legs, 2x6 for the frame, but what for the top?  Redwood?  Pine?

Nothing looked good at Home Depot.  Did I bite off more than I could chew?  Will I not be able to complete this project in time?  Jacobus came over and we went to town with building the frame 10 feet by 4 feet, seemed huge.  But why not, a lot of people can sit at a big table.  Cut the 2x6 to size, the 4x4 to size, predrilled the 4x4 legs to accept the 1/2" carriage bolts, added some wood glue and started building.  By 3pm I thought it best to call Stock Lumber and asked when they closed.  After all it was Good Friday and they might close early.  And wouldn't that suck if they did, because we did not have our material for the top of the table at that point.  And how many times have I started a project thinking I had all the materials only to find half way through I needed to make another store run for something more.  Seems all the time when working on the car.

Stock Lumber sells wood up to 20 feet long, but you need to buy the whole board if you can not leave at least 8 feet of wood to be put back on the shelf.  You could end up paying for a lot of the waste.  Red Mahogany, Red Oak, Clear Redwood, so much to choose, what should I get? what will look best?
And Jacobus... what will this cost?  The wood here is sold by the foot.  How much feet do we need ?  If the table is 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, we want some wood to over hang the frame and then we can cut the ends to the size we want to end with.  OK... how wide is each board?  And to think I was to busy smoking pot in high school, ditching math class and saying to my buddies; who needs this class anyways. The Redwood was the prettiest, with it's long streaks of red and yellow coloring.  So Clear Redwood it is.

I'd love to say we finished it before dark, but that would be a lie.  Thank God for flood lights and good friends, Jacobus was great staying until we finished.  At 7pm the new table went into the backyard ready for Easter Sunday.