Monday, November 7, 2011

Score!!

Can I get a "Geaux Tigers"?!!? We were really excited for our Tigers win this weekend over Alabama. The Hubs was lucky enough to go to the game. So instead of hanging around the house alone all weekend the Con-Man and I headed down to Houston to visit my parents. They were having a party and cooking lots of good food for the game- how could I resist? 


While in Houston I thought I would check out some of the salvage shops in town. I've been looking for some rustic reclaimed wood for another coffee table project I have in mind. I've decided to use the hairpin legs from the table I found at the Goodwill and turn it into a table like this:





I've come to find out that reclaimed wood is hard to come by in Oklahoma; something about how trees don't really grow there or something like that. So I headed to Downtown Houston and the first place I stopped; Adkins Architectural Antiques and Treasure turned out to be a gold mine! Once I got there and looked around I didn't see any old wood; mainly old windows, doors, and iron. Way cool but not what I was looking for. A little discouraged I asked one of the guys and he showed me this:



A lone chunky beautiful piece of yellow pine stuck in a corner. SCORE! It was exactly what I was looking for. He went on to tell me that they had more beams like this in their warehouse. YES!! I was sold. He directed me to their warehouse; in a somewhat shady part of town. I was a little nervous but once the guy (who barely spoke English) let me inside I was pumped. This place was filled with old rustic stuff. Lots of old doors, huge iron pieces and statues, ect. But I honed in on the pile of wood beams in the corner. 


After some language barrier issues I picked out the one I wanted and the dude cut it down for me so it would fit in my car. He was super nice and helpful. I was so giddy about my new wood I couldn't wait to get it home and show it off to the 'rents.



I'm really excited to work on this project. The first thing I have to do is get all the nails out of my wood... It's full of them! I guess that comes with the territory of reclaimed wood. Then lots of sanding and sanding and sanding.




I feel like I got a pretty good deal on the wood. Not incredibly cheap; it was $5 a linear foot. So I paid $60 for all the wood I got. Not bad considering I paid almost $4 a linear foot for the stain grade pine at Home Depot on my last coffee table project. And this wood is almost 2" thick and way awesome. I won't have to fake antique it or anything! The legs were practically free. I'm so ready to say goodbye to my old college Ikea coffee table. This project is mainly going to be sweat equity but I'm hoping the final result will be well worth it.

Anyone else have some good furniture scores this weekend?

3 comments:

Peggy said...

I can hardly wait to see how you table turns out! I know it will be fantastic because those legs are gorgeous and the wood is spectacular! (hmm can you tell I am currently caffeine free??? ha ha!)

Scarlett859 said...

Can't wait to see the table. Those legs are awesome! Oh, and...

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Anonymous said...

TIP on those bent-over nails - Pry them up with your hammer's claws and then pound them back through the wood.