Weekend Projects: 5 Sturdy and Stylish DIY Dining Tables

To create a dining table that's perfect for your family and your surroundings, go the DIY route. While you may need to scrounge a bit for materials, you'll end up with a piece that's just right.

By Jennifer Noonan | Updated Apr 25, 2014 1:37 PM

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The dining table is where families gather to enjoy meals, swap stories, and make memories. Given its central role in the life of any household, doesn’t it make sense to customize your dining table to meet your needs precisely and coordinate attractively with your decor? You’d be surprised by the number of sturdy and stylish dining table designs that are easy enough for a beginning do-it-yourselfer to create. This weekend, instead of shopping around for the perfect piece, create your own DIY dining table.

 

1. REPURPOSE PALLETS

Pallet Dining Table

Photo: lanared.blogspot.com

Rich in character, this DIY dining table includes a mix of materials. The tabletop is an old door that’s been sanded smooth and surfaced with scrap wood repurposed from shipping pallets. Charmingly unrefined in its look, this table is as great a conversation starter as it is a place to have a conversation.

 

2. SPIFF UP A SPOOL

DIY Dining Table - Spool

Photo: etsy.com

A large wooden electrical cable spool lends itself naturally to reuse as a dining table, perfect for a compact apartment or eat-in kitchen. To complete the arrangement, use smaller spools as matching chairs. Here, a variety of translucent stains work together to create a geometric peace sign pattern.

 

3. RETOOL A SEWING MACHINE 

DIY Dining Table - Sewing Machine

Photo: allsortsofpretty.com

For an easy, eye-catching DIY dining table, start with the legs of an antique sewing machine. You can find these vintage wrought-iron gems either online or at your local thrift store. The tabletop, meanwhile, is simply made from boards of stock lumber that have been stained to highlight and enhance the wood’s natural beauty.

 

4. GIVE A DOOR SOME LEGS

DIY Dining Table - Door

Photo: staceyembracingchange.com

Here’s yet another DIY dining table that involves an old door. Readily available—perhaps you already have one in your basement—a wood door doesn’t need much alteration to become an eating surface. Although a pair of wooden sawhorses function as the legs here, you can raise a door on many different types of platforms.

 

5. SUPPORT A BUTCHER BLOCK

DIY Dining Table - Butcher Block

Photo: lumberjockeys.com

The advantage of butcher block is its resilience; after all, people use this stuff for cutting boards. Joining together multiple blocks can be time-consuming, though. The quickest route to a DIY dining table like this is to purchase a premade butcher-block countertop and to support the surface on hairpin legs.