One Room Challenge Week Two: DIY Farmhouse Entryway Table

Add charm to your entryway with this DIY farmhouse entryway table. It’s a breeze to make, especially for beginners! 

So, we’ve hit the ground running on this whole One Room Challenge thing. To say that we are ahead of schedule is a bit of an understatement. We’ve never been in this situation before – in all other things, we’ve had set backs and holdups, so this is a strange, yet exciting, feeling for us!

It’s so fun to see a space in our house that is actually transforming and looking like a real room.

We have a plan for what we want and it’s not something that we just keep talking about or have to wait for seventeen million other things to get done. It’s a plan that we can actually complete in this time frame.

When we say we want to add a plank wall, we can go out and do it. We don’t have to wait for the sheet rock or the mudding or the windows or the piping or plumbing or whatever else.

We’re both just excited to be working on an area that we can see quick results and is a space with projects that we can do ourselves – we don’t need to ask anyone else for help. We’ve been blessed beyond belief to have family that is willing and able to help with the house and we are so, so thankful for that help. But sometimes you just want to be able to do it yourself.

Which is the exact feeling I had with this week’s project.

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I’ve been searching Pinterest for the past few weeks, looking for ideas for an entryway table. We wanted something long enough for the wall, but not too wide because the front door needs to open. I ended up stumbling upon these building plans from RogueEngineer.

After reading through the post and comments, I thought, “Yea okay, I could maybe do this.”

I asked Brett to teach me how to use the miter saw to cut wood and if you follow us on Instagram or read the Friday Nesting last week, you know that he was quite reluctant to teach me. I eventually pestered him enough and I finally learned how to cut wood and still have all my fingers intact.

After conquering the miter saw, it was on to the Kreg Jig.

Sidenote: This tool is seriously the coolest. If you don’t own one and want to dabble in furniture making, it is an absolute must!

After taking everything out of the box, I carefully read the instructions, figured out what (almost) all of the pieces were for and began cutting holes in the pieces of wood that were going to be screwed together to make the top. After feeling like a major badass because I was able to do this on my own without asking for help (Brett was gone for work and my dad was over to do furnace things, but he was letting be me), I screwed in the first 2 ½ inch screw. It went all the way through the wood; the bottom hole was too big.

“DADDDD! I NEED HELP!”

Apparently, there was this little circle thing that goes on the drill bit that stops your screwdriver from going down too far into the wood. The instructions talked about this, but the picture wasn’t clear about what it was used for and they called it this weird name, so I just pretended like I didn’t read that part and went on to the next step.

Maybe not the best idea.

My dad showed me how to put it on and what it was for. I then had to go back and cut in new holes. Turns out, that circle piece is actually really useful and everything went together like a charm.

After cutting holes in all the other pieces, I sanded the x-bracket pieces of wood prior to putting them together, per the Rogue Engineer’s instructions.

Everything else was sanded after assembly.

I did make an oopsie on putting the x-bracket together and the pieces do not quite line up like they should, but it’s barely noticeable and adds to the whole ‘homemade’ effect.

After it was all together, we brought it upstairs to paint.

We were still a little unsure of what color we wanted the walls, but were leaning towards a light- to mid-gray color. I didn’t want the table to blend in with that, so we had to choose something a little darker. But we couldn’t go too dark because the plank wall made from the barn wood is a dark brown and we didn’t want two dark colors right next to each other. We ended up going with Rust-oleum’s Country Gray Chalked Paint.

I only needed to put on one coat and touch up a few areas.

After painting, I distressed it a bit and put on the polyurethane clear coat.

And just like that, we now have an entryway table!

All in all, the whole project was really easy and the instructions were pretty clear – even for a newbie like myself!

For more design inspiration for the One Room Challenge, be sure to check out the other guest participants!

 

All our best,

 

One Room Challenge Week One: The Front Entryway