August Empress

When we first moved out of home 5 years ago we needed to buy the usual main pieces of furniture for our rental – couch, bed, dining table etc. Like many other Aussies who don’t want to spend a fortune, we dropped into Super-Amart, where everything comes in either chocolate brown, black or white. Everything we bought was chocolate brown. These items have served their purpose, we’ve been in our new house for almost a year and a half and I have been aching to replace all the chocolate brown since we moved in.

First thing to go, the dining table and chairs. I did want to reuse our tabletop as the base for creating a new wooden patterned tabletop. I originally thought of creating a chevron pattern, but it would have been more difficult to do and chevron seems to be a passing trend. Checking out brooklyn to west made me consider a more timeless pattern that still incorporated diagonal sections.

Lucky for me, my partner is a carpenter. He took care of cutting up the lengths of pine, nailing them to the old tabletop, and finishing off the edges of the table with his super skills. My job was to fill the holes, sand it all down and coat it with danish oil for a natural look. I did want to use a light coloured wood for more of a Scandinavian feel (and obviously avoid more dark brown), so pine was the most affordable option. It is a soft wood though, so it’s probably not ideal for a high traffic area and kids.

The new tabletop was paired up with Vike Moliden table legs from Ikea, and four white replica Eames Eiffel dining chairs. We did cut down the length of the original table to suit four chairs. I love the result! I have many more projects in mind, I will be recycling two of the old chairs, and I’ve bought some chalkboard paint for another idea, more on that to come in the next couple of weeks.