Dining Room Table re-do:Pt.4: Working on the Base

Hi Everyone,

I spent the afternoon with my husband building a wooden base for the table. Unfortunately we couldn't find all of the pipe parts that we needed so we switched gears and made a wooden base and for my money, I think it looks great. Here's the story and photos:

When we couldn't find pipe parts, I had to move quickly to plan b: a wooden base. We went to a lumber yard and purchased 4 4ft. cedar porch posts and 5 cedar 2x4s and came home and set to work. I had the measurements from the old table base and we set about to create a new base that corresponded to those measurements.

In this photo you can see the posts. We cut all four of them down to 27 inches long. The grooved ends will sit on the floor:

Here they are all cut:

 The we cut one of the 2x4s to 27 inches long and screwed between the cedar 4x4s. This comprised a table leg assembly and we made two of these, one for each end of the table:

Then we brought up the assemblies and a bunch of clamps and levels and assembled the base using the frame from the old base (that's the part you see with the level sitting on it):

One we got the entire structure level and sitting square on the floor, I screwed the frame to the legs:

The next two photos show you what the table looks like:

I still need to cut and install a stretcher between the 2x4s and then it will be finished. All we'll have to do then is screw the base to the underside of the top and then apply polyurethane to the base.

I'll be finishing the table tomorrow and I'll post more photos then.

VW