A natural edge dining table with steel legs

This project has been a long time coming but it’s finally done and I am sooooo happy! I have wanted a new dining table for a long time. My last one was very country, shabby chic and just wasn’t suited to what I liked anymore. There was nothing wrong with it (I sold it to a friend so not all was lost!), but I wanted to modernise my dining space, get a bigger table and I really wanted something a bit different.

Back in May I was hunting around on Pinterest for some ideas and came up with the notion that maybe I could buy a slab of timber and put it all together myself. I did some googling and couldn’t believe that right around the corner from my house was a company called Natural Edge Milling. I had no idea! It was early Sunday morning when I discovered this and I raced in to wake my husband share my joy on “our new project”! Hahahahaha…. his head went back under the covers, but eventually he came round and thought it was actually a top idea. So I started emailing Justin at Natural Edge Milling and next minute (I still say that as nekminnit) we were at his property sorting through his piles of timber slabs…

I chose a slab of Stringybark. It had been kiln dried so it was solid and sturdy. Justin then took a few weeks to sand and fill all the cracks/holes. It did cost me $1,600 for the finished slab. I have also done an outdoor table (blog post coming soon) but that slab was found in a backyard for $150. So you can see that you get what you pay for and considering this one was being used inside as my main dining table I needed it to be good quality and finished to perfection.

You may have also seen during the week I did an outdoor table too. It was very coincidental that after I bought this indoor slab I spotted another slab on a Facebook site and bought that too to complete an outdoor table. See that DIY here.

All that we had to do was add a top coat of satin to finish it off. We lathered it with about 6 coats of Cabot’s Satin Water Based Polyurethane Varnish. I had researched this and it worked well so I would highly recommend this product. Stay away from oil based because it does give an orange tinge.

Then I measured and ordered some black matt steel table legs from Australia Hairpin Legs. They come ready to screw to your table. Pretty affordable too and you can have any size you like. So easy.

All that was left to do was find some chairs. I spent many many hours looking for something to suit. I just couldn’t decide! Originally I wanted timber chairs, but there was the floor and the sideboard to consider so all the timbers would have clashed. In the end I went with these replica bentwood style chairs from 1825 Interiors. We have a shop here locally so that was handy.

I am rapt. The live edge really is a talking point. I love how each side is different and the details in the grain is soooooo good. I am glad I decided to do this project! My photography skills are very average and I think it looks much better and bigger in real life!

Did you see that I also did a DIY on an outdoor table slab??

♥ KC.

– not sponsored, bought it all.