I was so excited when one of my designer friends contacted me with a new project. Their clients had just purchased an old cabin and were excited about renovating it. They wanted a custom wood bar top with a matching dining table — but with a twist: sparkling blue epoxy in the voids of the bar top.
It’s always a fun challenge to design multiple complementary, but still unique, pieces. And this client’s dining area layout posed an added challenge: finding the perfect slab to fit a long and narrow space.
Here’s how I designed and brought to life a custom wood bar top and matching dining table for a client’s family.
Finding a Wood Slab With Character
Because of the layout of their dining area, we had to be particular when choosing the correct slab for the dining table. It had to be 11 feet long and not too wide.
For both the wood bar top and the dining table slabs, we chose a beautiful piece of black walnut taken off an orchard in southern Oregon back in 2010. The trees were huge, and because of disease in one of them, all three walnut trees needed to be taken down.
The slab we chose for the bar top had a lot of small voids in the middle and along the sides, which made it the perfect piece for adding the eye-catching blue epoxy. It also fit perfectly between two columns, which the clients wanted as a pass-through countertop.
For the dining table, I was able to find the perfect slab with a fun shape — it had a curve that would fit the space perfectly. The dark Oregon black walnut slab added some needed depth and color to the cabin dining room.
Dining Table & Wood Bar Top Challenges
Creating these large pieces takes a lot of time. Utah has an extremely dry climate, so bringing in massive slabs from a humid state like Oregon meant they needed several months to acclimate to our heat. The slabs had even been air dried for five years before we purchased and put them through the kiln process.
I stored these slabs in my big shop that’s heated with a coal furnace and has to be cleaned every night. This allows the slabs to move and expand under the dry Utahn heat and makes sure there won’t be any more movement once these massive beautiful slabs go to their final homes.
When the time came to install the wood bar top and dining table, the size of the table created a final challenge: getting it from Utah to the clients’ Northern Salt Lake City cabin. I wasn’t able to find a moving company, so my brother kindly drove up with me to deliver it the night before Thanksgiving.
Keeping It in the Family
This is one project I’ll always remember because my beautiful daughters were with me throughout the build, coloring all over the walls of my 1,500-square-foot shop with sidewalk chalk. I even taught them how to use a card scraper to smooth the top before sanding.
As a final added detail, the clients wanted the dining table to fit the cabin theme. They had seen a set of legs with pine tree silhouettes I’d done for an earlier project, so we copied the pattern, and they absolutely loved the results! The legs fit perfectly with the cabin theme, and the tabletop was the perfect centerpiece for their gathering space.
Once in place, the clients got to see the final product. The wife cried with excitement to have their beautiful walnut table and matching wood bar top in place for their family Thanksgiving Day gathering.
Contact me today to discuss the project you’ve been dreaming of.
