I am so glad God has blessed me with a handy husband! I have lots of projects I want done, and although my dad raised me to be pretty handy myself, it certainly is nice to have a man around to do the heavy lifting… oh, and the math!
I really adore Pottery Barn’s style, however, we could never afford, nor would I want, to spend the amount that they ask for some of their pieces of furniture. So, my philosophy is if you can’t buy it… why not build it! Plus, it’s so much more satisfying to know YOU built something! I saw these plans for the Benchwright Farmhouse table from Ana White and knew that was the table I wanted for our breakfast nook table diy!
We already figured we were going to have to make some adjustments for size, since the plans are for a full dining table and we were planning on using it in our breakfast nook. That’s where Kyle and the math come in super handy! We also tried to find a lot of the hardware that Ana mentions, but we were not successful.
Another change we had to make, by design, not by choice, was to straighten the legs. We made our table dimensions too small to accommodate angled legs and still be able to fit two chairs between them! I love the look of the angled legs, but it just wasn’t going to work with our dimension changes.

The stain was used, as always, was Rustoleum Dark Walnut from Lowe’s. We typically use about two coats. One piece of advice when staining- make sure if you’re using an oil-based stain like this, that your polyurethane topcoat is also oil-based. We learned that the hard way! I bought a “matte” polyurethane topcoat that was water-based and it just scratched right off!

-Chrissy