Project: Chessboard Tabletop

I've been working on a couple of projects this past week and will soon be finishing up one that took up several days between cutting, gluing, nailing, and painting. In the meantime, though, I was able to get a couple of other smaller projects finished, one of which was a wooden top for our welded metal table. We bought the table for $20 at a garage sale last summer and it came with a glass top that was broken at one corner. Luckily, the glass was bigger than the tabletop by enough that I went to have the glass cut down to remove the broken part and it then fit the table exactly. Unluckily, we then knocked over some long boards that were sitting outside near the table and re-broke the glass quite worse than previously. So the table had no top for a while. We decided maybe a wooden top would be better since it is outside, even though the design of the table is pretty cool and Matt liked that with the glass it showed.

We bought a pre-glued pine sheet from Lowe's (pretty much the same cost as the table ... a bit expensive, but no gluing or planing for us to do, and it was about the right size that we didn't have to cut it down at all). We decided instead of just lacquering the wood we'd do something a little extra first. Here's what we did:

Putting polyurethane on the back side. Check out the cool table!

Top side: Ta Da! Chessboard burned into the wood with a soldering iron. I don't have a super-close-up here but if I did you'd see that the squares are not perfect. I made them in strips with a tip for the iron that looks like a flathead screwdriver, and it took a long time, but I think it is decent for outside use.

With the rest of our outdoor furniture: two chairs from Menards and the pew in the back that was rescued during summer work from a trash pile in the woods near a church (meaning: free!). And our many, many plants.

Practice set-up with the minifigures that we use for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, we're nerds, but it is fun. Now I just need 28 more minifigures to make a whole chess set! Or we'll use some rocks and paint one side with the names of the pieces if we want to be cheap. Then we could paint the other side of half of them and have them double as checkers.

Another summer project in the bag just one week in! In two more weeks I'll have summer classes, but until then I hope the project streak keeps up. I'm excited!