The weekend went very well… but the operation “finish setting up the webpage”, not so much. I don’t stop working on it until it’s perfect, so it takes me a long time to make it look exactly like I want it to. So it’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until I sort everything out. Anyway, like I said, the weekend was very nice – I was able to enjoy Bilbao’s Aste Nagusia with my friends and we even celebrated a birthday on Saturday. Two of my cousins came to visit from Madrid and I think they had a good time; partying here is quite different from Madrid… We’re getting together today as well (they’re staying at my parents’ house with my brother) at my place to have dinner and play some poker, so it should be fun!

Today’s post is possible thanks to the amazing Ana White of Knock Off Wood. As I already mentioned, my apartment is smallish but it has a huge outdoor space. Since our living room/dining room is limited in size we can’t accommodate a lot of people inside for dinner, so we decided to buy a very big table for outdoor use. We wanted something made of solid wood, kind of rustic feeling. But everything we saw was so expensive. We’re talking more than 1000$ expensive. And that was just for the table… if you added in the chairs, it became closer to 2000$! I wasn’t about to spend that much on an outdoor seating area, so I thought that maybe I could find something online that would help me build it. We had already bought MDF boards to make our closet fittings so I knew I could find solid boards. That’s when I found Knock Off Wood (right now Ana migrated her blog to a new domain, Ana White). I was hooked instantly! She designs easy to follow plans to build your own furniture – some designs are original, some are similar to well known furniture retailers’ pieces in the US – but all are equally amazing. And best of all: it’s free! I’ve always said that the generosity of bloggers amazes me; people work on recipes, diy projects, and other stuff and they offer all this advice to world without expecting anything in return. I think that’s pretty amazing!

After finding Ana’s website the hardest part was deciding which table we wanted to do. The farmhouse table had the rustic feel we were going for, so that’s what we did. The hardest part was converting the measurements to metric, and accommodating the dimensional lumber to the lumber they sell here. Also, finding a seller that didn’t charge 4x as much for wood as it sells for in the US was pretty difficult, too. Other than that, the cutting and building came together very nicely, as you can see in this picture. We built it between my boyfriend and myself, he was a bit skeptic at first, but ended up agreeing that Ana’s plans were very detailed and easy to follow. We’ve been so busy during the summer that we haven’t been able to finish sanding and applying varnish to it, but I think it looks really good.

I hope you liked this project – next up are the rustic benches to go with our table! I also hope you all go visit Ana’s site and start building something, too. I’m off for today, those benches aren’t going to build themselves!

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments.