DIY Fancy X Farmhouse Dining Table!

I've been wanting to build some new living room/dining room furniture for a while now.  I have loved looking up plans on Ana White's site as well as Shanty2chic to get ideas.  Their collaboration for a fancy x farmhouse table was #1 on my list.  I love the look as well as the reasonable price especially compared to anthropolgy's $$$ retail store price tag!  Check out their free wood plans here.

Well it was a total shock when last month my hubby looked the plans over and decided to help me build one!  I was over the moon thrilled since I'm about 7 months pregnant and most everyone thinks I'm nuts for wanting to build new furniture now.  My reasoning is, well that's why I want my hubby to do it!

The plans were pretty straight forward and we just followed it step by step.  He picked up the wood from Home Depot and got to work on the cut list.  It helped to work as a team so one person could square off when needed, glue and hold the x feet pieces in place while the other person screwed or nailed it together.  Our only big hitch was when we built the matching longer benches we didn't check the placement of the feet.  When it was all done we weren't able to push the benches under the table!  We wanted to be able to tuck them in so we had to remove the feet and redo that step.  Otherwise this wasn't a hard first wood furniture project to do together!  Here are a few pics during the building process (ignore my messy garage):

It was also the first time either of us had used a kreg jig and it was definitely worth buying!  We bought the small junior kit and it worked well for the steps that suggested using one.  I picked up the kreg jig R3 kit from lowes or you can always order it off amazon which can be found here.  We used it to attach the table top to the base instead of using L brackets underneath.

He planed a few areas to make it more even and sanded everything down really well.  Next, he applied wood conditioner before staining to help the wood absorb it more evenly.  I bought this minwax pre stain wood conditioner (pictured below) and that can be found here.

Then we applied two coats of red oak 215 minwax stain (we waited 24 hours between coats).  The wood conditioner did help out with staining it more evenly.  We tested it before hand on scrap wood to see if it made a difference and it did!

 He applied three coats of minwax semi gloss polyurethane to seal it. iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=stylesipler-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B000LNTXUO&asins=B000LNTXUO&linkId=7c477ed31a15c97df896b237ee365966&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066C0&bg_color=FFFFFF">

    </iframe>   He waited 24 hours between coats and he lightly sanded in between too.  We left it out to dry for two or three days before setting it up inside our house.  

Overall it cost us a bit more than $65 as suggested by Shanty2Chic since we needed to buy the kreg jig, wood conditioner, and a second can of both stain and polyurethane (I had 3/4 of a can of each already) in addition to the supply list.  I love our new dining table!  It'll fit our soon to be family of 6 plus a couple of guests.  Now I've just got to figure out how to decorate it!