The plans are Ana White Providence table plans. I can't even began to tell you how much I love Ana White's plans. While we lived in Japan we had a house furnished by my husband's job so when we moved back to America the only furniture we owned was old stuff from when we were in college. The past two years I've been able to furnish my whole house with Ana furniture and stuff from thrift stores. If you want to learn to build your furniture just start with easy plans like the $10 ledges or a little kids table.
I'm not going to post a whole step by step since Ana already did that with the plans. I am going to give you my tips! I cut all the wood, sanded it and then painted it before building. I used a 4 inch foam roller for all of it. So much easier to paint flat lumber than try to get in all the nooks and crannies with a brush. I did 2 coats and then a touch up coat when it was all built.
I assembled the tabletop and both bench seats using wood glue and my kreg jig. The kreg jig® makes it so easy to build a tabletop.
Bench in progress. All assembled with the kreg jig® but you could do wood glue and just regular screws too. I found the actual building of the benches and table to go pretty quickly. The painting and cutting seemed to take the longest!
I would guess it would take two Saturdays to build the picnic table and both benches. One Saturday for cutting the lumber, sanding and painting and the next for building.
I used the pocket hole plugs to cover the visible kreg jig holes. I just wood glue them in and then sand. If you want them totally invisible you can put a little wood fill in there too.
Totally love. The table is super sturdy and I love the angles of it underneath. It's also nice and big. The benches can seat three and you could put two chairs on the ends and be able to seat eight.
We will see how the white holds up to my 3 crazy sons. The table is under our covered wood deck so it's already a LOT of wood and I wanted a contrast.
Pretty amazing for $100! The lumber was $70 and a I bought a gallon of Ace Hardware outdoor trim and house paint for $30. The paint color is called "Heavenly Sand" and is a nice creamy white.
