And the Bolts Have It.

I would like to tell you all about my Murphy's Law table.

It all started out because my brother-in-law had a spare tabletop...random, I know. Long story short, he got it with a bunch of other stuff at an auction. It is a pretty nice tabletop, so when he was just going to throw it away, my parents saved it from the trash heap. They were being very thoughtful because they felt it would look nice in our travel room. The only problem is that the tabletop was just that...no legs.

So about this point, I can see you wondering whether I am suddenly going to become this all-powerful crafty person, or become a regular Tim Allen. I'm pretty sure that you are leaning toward an Auna-ba-nauna version of Tool Time.

LUCKILY, my daddy was here to help me with this table. We made a trip to Lowe's the night before and picked up ready to screw in legs that we would just need to screw in and stain. Alas, it was not to be so. The next day when we started our "simple" project, we realized that the screws on the legs were too big for where the table already had places for them. This meant that we had to go back to Lowe's. To make certain that we wouldn't make the same mistake, we took the table top with us. (It is only a small coffee table size.)

When we got to Lowe's I returned the old legs and we went in search of new ones. Rolling the table back toward lumber on the top of our cart, we found the legs and tried different styles. None of them were fabulous, but the same style we had just brought back was doable. We tried all sorts of different table kits looking for screws that would fit and realized that this was going to be a serious project, because everything was either too small or too big. I was beginning to feel a bit like Goldilocks. Finally we decided that we would have to go find the screws separate from the legs, buy the same legs we returned, but for some reason for a higher price, and some dowel. Why dowel, you ask? Well, that is because we took the screws out of the legs, pounded dowels into the holes and then re-drilled for a slightly smaller double sided screw.

This would have worked great, especially after we found the color of stain that we wanted, if only I had been able to find my pliers at my house. I KNOW I have some. I can see them in my mind. Where Todd put them, however, is a mystery. So, I ended up borrowing pliers and a pair of vise grips from my neighbor. We finally got the screws out and everything drilled back how it should be, but we were presented with a problem when putting the new screws in. We couldn't grip the place where the threads were because we needed them to screw, but we could only get the screw into the leg so far. I though to myself, I wonder if I screw this into the table, if it will tighten in once it reaches as far as the screw goes into the table? Did that work, you ask? No. Of course not. Instead, I screwed the leg right through the other side of the table. Fabulous. "Never give up. Never surrender."

To finish this story, since this blog entry is getting absolutely gargantuan, the color of stain we chose was wrong...in fact, we had the right color at the house all along, my dad had to go BACK to Lowe's and got some bolts that we used to tighten the screws into the legs by facing them in opposing directions on the screw and giving us a grip. Superglue to the rescue, which helped fix the veneer on the top of the table and we were done. OK, so last of all? Maybe we should have measured the height of the legs. We flipped the table over and "Oh yeah...this might be a bit too tall."

We'd had enough. We just cut the ends of the legs off. So, if you would like to see our Murphy's Law table, it is now on display in our travel room. Please, just don't put your feet up on it, as I haven't finished creating supports for the spindly legs. Gotta love a FREE tabletop. Oh wait, that was supposed to be free and easy? Doh!