I found our table

...well, actually, I made our harvest table! It comes next Wednesday. And it really feels like mine.

I picked the table top and the legs - well TJ had a say and more than agreed to what I wanted. It's a 7-foot long wooden door from an old factory made of Siberian pine, with an unknown history in a few repaired patches. You just want to run your hands over the dark stained boards. To make it into a true harvest table top, they encase the door with perpendicular "breadboard ends."

I read somewhere that Siberian Pine wood has excellent resonance qualities and is used to make pianos, harps and guitars. Fits our family!

I told the store, which happened to be closing for good the next weekend, where I wanted the legs placed so we had the right amount of overhang (to look like our vision of a harvest table ), and still offer enough leg room at the ends. We pulled 3 ladder-back chairs up to another similar sized table and slid three chairs between the leg placement we measured. They will easily slide underneath. Eight people would fit around our table comfortably.

A silverware drawer in the skirt would've been just perfect, but we are getting a custom assembled table to my specifications using the inventory still left. At less than half price, I can't really complain. In fact, it feels very much like the best part of when I redesigned old broken homes: I used the essential good bones that were there, but made it into something fresh and wonderful.

We paid, set a delivery date and headed back to our car in the heavy rain, excitedly talking about our table. Just as he started the engine, I told TJ to wait, and ran back to the store. "Don't finish the legs or skirt," I told them. " I'll do that." I'd seen many wonderful, distressed milk paint tables while doing my farm table research. 

I don't need another task in all this project planning,shopping and designing, and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into figuring out how to use lye-based milk paint. But now that I've had a direct hand in creating this focal point to our new way of living, I just need this table to be really ours. I want my hand in the table's history too.