Going to the Lumber Yard

WARNING: This blog post does not have any pictures. Proceed with caution.

After selecting a stain and having the pieces to our base assembled, the next step was to buy some wood so that we could actually make the table top. Although I didn't anticipate it, this part of project became the longest and most arduous.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, Tyler and I originally thought we'd be building the table out of hardwood. As the name indicates, hardwoods are best for tables because they are, in fact, hard. It is difficult to create dents, dings, etc. Unfortunately, as I also previously mentioned, hardwood is expensive! Thankfully, we both quickly came around to the idea of using pine - a softwood that is also relatively inexpensive. We appeased each other by telling ourselves that it was our first table, and if we messed up we didn't want to do it on something expensive. We also realized that we were actually okay with having a dinged up table. It would create charm.

We ended up going to two lumber yards. Our first visit was to a local lumber yard that we drive by on our way to work everyday. The service there was great! We asked a lot of questions, and the employees were VERY patient (Thank you Hans!) with us as we visited and called the store on numerous occassions without really buying anything. During our last visit to the local lumber yard, Hans suggested that we visit another lumber yard that was a few towns away. I realize now that it sounds like he was tired of listening to us, but I swear that's not the case! He even said, "I don't want to lose you business, but it sounds like _(name of the other place)_ probably has more of what you're looking for". I swear we weren't that bad! Given his kindness and patience over the past week or so, we heartily thanked him and set of to our next destination.

The second lumber yard was FOR REALZ. The first lumber yard had been contained to one building, but this place was huge. There was wood everywhere - piles and piles of it! We ended up spending two hours there, only two buy 3 boards of wood. I would venture to say that is an unusually long period of time, and the only reason we were there that long was due to two mitigating factors. One, it was snowing the day we went and there was only one man at work, making the process of getting through custumors go much slower than it normally would. Two, Tyler and I had never done this before!

The lumber yard had several different grades of pine wood, and each came in various widths, lengths and thicknesses. The width of the the boards affected the look of the table, so we had to imagine how our  table top would look made out of 3, 4, 5, or more boards. We liked the idea of an odd number of boards, but given the available widths or options were limited. We could either go with 3 11 2/4" boards, making our tabletop about 34 inches wide, or we could go with 5 9" boards, giving us 45" wide table. Considering the limited space in our "dining room", we opted for the former.

Once we figured that out, then, we had to find 6 ft. boards (the length we'd pre-determined for the table) with that width or we'd have to pay for more wood than we actually needed. Unfortunately, there weren't many, maybe 4 or 5, and not all of the boards were uniform in their thickness. Fortunately, however, the lumber yard was kind enough to cut down some 8 ft. boards for free, giving us a couple more options.

Finally, after we'd weeded out any width/length/thickness issues, we had to inspect the boards that were available for knots, splits and grain. Obviously, we wanted to avoid any splits or cracks in the wood, but we also chose boards that had few knots, unique grain patterns, or discoloration. Some of the boards had grey streaks or had a reddish tint. We thought that by choosing "clean" looking wood, the tabletop would look more uniform and polished.

At the end of the day, we walked away with 3 11 1/4" boards that were 6 ft long and 1 14/" thick, which cost us approximately $45. Not bad.