reclaimed cedar Archives - The Weekend Country Girl

My kids love coffee, hot chocolate, and hot tea. I like it all too, but I really love the idea of having everything that our guests need set up away from the kitchen when breakfast/ evening meal prep is underway.

We have just the spot in our home for a coffee bar and we have just the materials to make a rustic coffee bar based on inspiration from The Summery Umbrella. I purchased windows last winter at an epic garage sale for $2.00 each. I brought our stash of reclaimed cedar planks and the storage buildings contain more random wood.

We used the windows as the basis for the front of the cabinet. When we laid out the windows it was obvious that they would have to go into the cabinet horizontal instead of vertical like My Summery Umbrella was able to do. The vintage windows are large and heavy and with them hung horizontally, the cabinet will still be slightly taller than counter height. The length of the bar is 90 inches. It is 12 inches wide and made from cedar we took off our old lake house, Star Hill that we have stored and moved. We really do like our reclaimed wood.

The next step was building the skeleton. We had enough reclaimed wood but a mistake meant we needed two new 2×4’s.

We got a new toy recently…a planer. Oh my goodness, Mr. Math got a good deal on Craig’s List but I was skeptical. I did not know how much I would love it. It makes all my mismatched thicknesses of reclaimed wood play nice with each other and knocks the sanding down to just finish sanding in minutes. We planed two 12 inch wide planks for the top and sides.

Any time you work with reclaimed wood and supplies it means you have to do a lot of trial and error. It feels sort of like we are playing a game of Tetris.

We used outdoor gate hinges and black iron handles for a couple of reasons; the windows are stinkin’ heavy and I liked how the black looked against the white and reclaimed cedar.

The display area will be filled with my pitchers, milk glass, and vintage cookware. I didn’t have everything up at the house but I put what I had in for you to get an idea.

We already used it as a serving counter on New Year’s Eve.

The coffee bar is going to serve a lot of purposes when we have a crowd. Having 90 inches of serving space away from the kitchen counters will be great.

Let’s face it, most of the time it is going to be a drink station.

Left overs from New Year’s Eve.

An all sorts of drinks station. (You have no idea how hard I had to look to scrounge up the drinks above!)

Mainly it will be a coffee/ tea bar, because that is who we are.

Here it is in our daily life. It will be a cluttered mess so my kitchen doesn’t have to be full of stuff. I am going to love this piece. It is narrow and provides room for the front door to open, it provides me 7 and a half feet of additional counter surface, and it looks like it belongs in our house. Be still my heart.

The house is coming along. I am proud of the progress we are making as we make Providence Acres our forever home.

Mr. Math and I are both thrilled to share our journey with you as we go. Thank you for the kind words you share.

Blessings,

Karen

We are getting ready for a trip across the country to see our kids in the Carolinas. About a month ago I got an email from my daughter asking if we could make a table and media console for two of her buddies. It just so happened that we had a pile of reclaimed wood hanging out in our garage and even more in a burn pile that I was itching to save. (Mr. Math made me get rid of a lot of wood as part of the big move😟. It was awesome to go down to the burn pile and drag some back out!)

I was excited because what my daughter’s buddies wanted could be done with our wood.

Today, I get to show you the reclaimed wood entry hall table.

The only instructions I got from The Southern Belle’s buddy were in this email: ” I’ve been dreaming of a long, narrow table for in our front hallway for a while now. I don’t have anything super particular in mind but it needs to be pretty skinny (maybe ballpark 8″ deep?) and long (4′ – could go longer but not too much shorter) and I like the open style (no cabinets).”

She also shared photos of her Atlanta home so we could see where it would be located.

After sharing some Pinterest pictures with her of tables I could see that she likes reclaimed wood and a little industrial. Mr. Math and I drew up a plan to make a table that looked like it had been used in a warehouse or workspace. I wanted the wood to be irregular, gouged, warped and darkened with age. The used cedar boards were perfect for the project.

It took us some trial and error. The first redition was too tall and narrow. It had to come all apart again and get cut down four inches. We also added a ten inch board to the top of the eight inch board. I stained the cedar with a mix of walnut and a lighter color called natural. The color unified the wood, and aged the wood.

Sanded but I stained

Stain on the wood.

The stain did not eliminate the wood grain and knots from the wood. I was worried.
We glued the top down then attached it with screws. Clamps held it all in place while the glue dried. We used a satin poly on the piece.