It’s a very exciting time in life right now. Our first daughter is due any day now and our life is about to re-center around a very special little girl. In my family, a lot of time gets spent in the kitchen and I think one of great hallmarks of family is gathering around the kitchen table for meals. Up to this point we’ve had a hand me down kitchen table that is an oak monstrosity from the 80’s that we painted to make it a little more contemporary. When we built our house a couple years ago we realized that this 48″ round table really didn’t fit the space well. A longer, rectangular configuration that could possibly seat 6-8 would be much better since we really don’t have a dining room. I’ve also been sitting on a stash of walnut that came from a fallen tree on my grandfather’s farm in 1957 that I think would be the perfect application for this table.

I wanted to go with a trestle style design to again compliment the slightly narrow space and keep an open feel so I came up with the above design and sketched it up in Pro/E. I spent this past weekend rough milling the heavy stock for the trestle ends and made a few templates and full size mock up of one of the sides just to solidify the design. I think the design will still be somewhat fluid as they always are with my stuff.

Coincidentally, my sister is also expecting a couple months after us and while talking to my father a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that my grandfather, who is 86 years old and has never flown, wants to get on a plane and fly from Arizona to Tennessee this fall to see his two new great grandchildren. I’m hoping to show him my two latest creations, my daughter and our new family table built from his lumber 50 years later.