I'm learning to renovate!

#nocluewhatimdoing #gonnadoitanyway

I'm a chronic, incurable DIYer and have been in the throes of redoing my home for several years. What I lack in know-how, I make up for in figure-it-out.

The first project I took on after my husband passed was building a kitchen table. I'd assisted in many woodworking projects, but I had never tackled one myself. I had also never operated a table saw. Ours was still boxed in our shed, ne'er assembled. I would be hosting Christmas dinner that year (as I usually do), and I just got a wild hair that I wanted to have a kitchen table by then. I had about a week to do it.

Sometimes, I'm just logical like that.

Some Assembly Required...

It was pretty chilly the day I dragged the table saw piece-by-piece out of the shed. I assembled it on the front porch, so most of the experience was documented on my Ring camera.

I was the general assembler in our marriage, so that part was business as usual.

Ana White has tons and tons of absolutely amazing project plans for just about anything you could want to build. I picked my table from her Beginner section and off to Lowes I went. I picked out my lumber (pine), careful to avoid anything too warped or beat up. That said, I knew this table would be suffering abuse of epic proportions, so I didn't get too bent.

I'll tell you what I would do differently, though. I picked out all of my boards from the plethora of studs there to choose from. This was not a great idea. There is this whole nuther section of higher grade lumber that would have made for nicer pickins.

That said, it's also okay that I went with the cheaper studs. It being my first project and all, it's got plenty of mistakes. Also, the freaking cat has used it as a scratching post, and knowing I want a do-over on this project is what has saved him. Litttrallly saved him.

I Stressed Myself Out Beyond All Belief

Seriously, who could have seen that coming? I gave myself a whole entire week to put together a table saw, learn to use it, buy supplies, learn to build a table, and plan out Christmas dinner. Two months after I'd lost my husband. And also, I got a Blackstone for Christmas and needed to assemble and learn to use that because my entire Christmas meal was based on cooking street tacos on the Blackstone. I had never made street tacos. I had also never heard of a Blackstone. And I had never gone to have a propane tank filled before.

You're starting to see my pattern of logic, no?

I think it may have been Christmas Eve when I was in the kitchen with table parts occupying one half of it and Blackstone parts occupying the other. I bounced back and forth betwixt the two putting them together. Elijah was also working on the Blackstone, so I was primarily doing managerial work on that for the first little bit of its assembly.

In the stress of it all, I suffered my first job site injury. Thank you Lord, I didn't run my finger through a blade (an event to which I've been witness...but perhaps that's a story for another day). Drilling distracted, my drill slipped off of the screw and stabbed - STABBED - into my thumb. Right through my ever-loving thumb nail. I'll spare you the pictures, but I did get them. It cracked my nail and left an open wound right in the blessed center of it. It burned like 25 levels of hellfire and throbbed like all get out. I opted to not process all that, though. I wrapped a bandage around it (cussing helped...don't let anyone tell you it doesn't), and I kept on with it.

It's a bit.....wobbly

In the end, I had a table for Christmas dinner. It wobbled. It wasn't sanded and had no finish on it. Also, we sat on camp chairs that were about 5" too short to be used with the table. But that's okay. We have never been a delicate bunch and appreciated my vision in spite of my execution.

We're approaching yet another holiday season and my good ol' table has accrued artwork from Chap, scars from that cat I was talking about, and various other dings and dents. I knew that would happen given the soft composition of pine and all. Funny thing, though...I've since finished laying the hardwood flooring in my kitchen (yet another story for yet another day) and that cured the wobble. So, my craftsmanship was a little better than I at first thought.

And hey, at least we have a table

Like I said, I'm an incurable DIYer, and that has often clashed with my perfectionist lean. I've said before that projects, for me, are about 10% doing the thing and 90% trying to fix what didn't turn out so great. One thing I have come to learn with my step into woodworking - and home renovations in general - is that I can accept my level of capability that I bring to the table (kyuck-kyuck) for now even if it's not what I want it to be. I tell my kids all the time that no one in the history of doing things has gotten better at doing the thing by not doing the thing.

Getting good at anything takes lots of time and lots of good practice.

The wall my table sets against represents my first attempt at wallpapering. And boy does it show. Aaaaaaaaaand the cat has shredded pieces of that, too (he deserves any bad thing that happens to him in life). The flooring underneath it is also rife with flaws and DIY-grade handymanning. But I did that. It needed done, and I did that. I did that over days when my very absolute soul felt like it was drowning in depths I never knew were there (stick around for more on that). And in the midst of it, as I cried over some piece of the project that was a complete and total hack job and then wiped my tears to get back at it, Annie Maebh said to me, "You know one thing I like about you? You just don't give up."

May she always be right.

By the way, here's my table, my wonky wallpaper, and my missing face plates because I lost the screws. Hashtag killin it.