The slowest table in the world

About 15 months ago, I bought a bunch of tiles from SCRAP, and mocked up a tabletop with some of them. I didn't have time to do any work aside from the mockup, so I carefully transferred the tiles onto a piece of hardboard and tucked it away in the attic until I got some spare time to finish the work.

I promptly forgot about it, and only remembered that the tiles were there when I occasionally would go up to retrieve something (or to close a window which had blown open -- the windows in the attic are not in what you would call good shape, and the ones on the south side of the house are starting to do antisocial things like shed panes of glass.) When I saw it, I would guiltily think "oh, right, I need to finish the table", vow to do something about this "this weekend", go back downstairs, and forget about the whole thing.

This summer, Russell decided that he was old enough to go upstairs and play in the attic, and as a result of this decision that attic became enough of a mess that whenever I had to go upstairs, I would come down vowing to sell the house and move to Canada (the move to Canada part is my ultimate intention, but I'd like to keep the house for a rental property anyways), and eventually the best got fed up with my whining and got together with both bears to clean it up. After a few rounds of tidying, my piles of projects became the messiest part of the attic and so I was asked to clean them up.

The tabletop (remember the tabletop? It's an article about the tabletop} was transferred down to the basement, where, after spending a couple of weeks precariously balanced on top of the storage bench, got glued onto a piece of 1/4 inch plywood. which then sat waiting for me to break down and buy some new 2x2 planking that I could use for tablelegs.

This last weekend, I finally put some more work into the slowest table in the world:

It's almost done. I need to put a skirt around the edge of the tabletop so that the edges of the tiles don't just hang out at the edges of the table, I need to sand the wooden parts so they don't have quite the same rustic look, and I probably need to grout the thing because there are some gaps between some of the tiles and I can just imagine the results of the pepsi syndrome on thin plywood.

This table comes from a wide variety of sources.

The tiles are from SCRAP.
The plywood under the tiles is from the Stupid Room.
The tabletop is attached to the table base via a couple of cleats that were originally part of the now-demised deck.
The legs, as previously mentioned, are new 2x2 stock from a local lumberyard.
and the apron is made from recycled pallets.

I cheated when I fastened the table together; the legs are glued to the apron, but I countersunk screws in to reinforce the joints, then hid them by plugging the holes with pieces of wooden dowel.

Perhaps I'll get the finishing touches onto the table before the heat death of the Universe, but until then it's sitting upstairs being used as a bedside table.

This Space for Rent

The slowest table in the world