My proudest

When compiling my projects this is the one I am most proud of. It is actually three pieces: dining room table, corner hutch, and bench.

My wife’s birthday is December 27th, so one year for Christmas she asked for a dining room table. She got that for Christmas and for her birthday she got the hutch: 2000 was a very good year for her. I added the place settings and bowl a couple months later. I recently finished the bench in 2007.

Everything is made from red oak with several poplar dowels to add accents and a look of old world craftsmanship. When done, I stained everything with a red oak stain to make it look just a bit redder. We looked for chairs and found a set of four, but could not find any end chairs with arm rests, so we kept looking.

Over the years we began to host a Christmas Eve party for family members and the four chairs quickly became inadequate, so I decided to make a bench. Now the problem was a piece of wood: where could I get a piece of wood big enough for the seat of the bench? My in-laws down-sized and I inherited a piece of 2 X 12 oak planking that was used as a workbench, chopping block, and vise holder (the underside still shows signs of a hatchet, holes where the vise was mounted, and stains from years motor oil soaking on the surface.) I had no idea what I was going to do with this piece of wood, so it was sitting in my back yard leaning against the firewood pile when my wife said “Why don’t you use that board for the bench?”

As I said, this project, even though it is actually several pieces, is probably what I am the proudest of. This is partly because of what it is, who it is for, and the fun that it was making. My wife keeps asking for two smaller bowls to go on either side of the big one in the center of the table, so maybe this isn’t done yet.

-- Brian, Lebanon PA, If you aren’t having fun doing it, find something else to do.