Building a Farmhouse Table. Step 1: find a farm

Here we go with post #4 and already I'm doubting my ability to commit to Blogging. How do you people do this?! I mean with kids and packing lunches and soccer practice and going to work... is this why Meth was invented? Just so folks could stay up for hours on end to do all of the above and then blog about it?

Lately, and more often than I care to admit, my conversations with friends have begun with them saying something to the effect of, "Hey, I saw an old pallet in the dumpster at work and I thought of you." What do you do with a statement like that?! I'm not sure if I should take offense of be flattered; I'll opt for the latter.

I'm currently working on a farmhouse table for someone and got a lead on some really old barn wood. Emphasis on the word "really" and also on "old"... and while we're at it, "barn wood". So I enlisted my brother-in-law and drove out to the old Cooper Family Farm tucked away behind the Guilford College campus. I grew up near here and spent many a Saturday afternoon riding my bike across that campus as a kid with his sights set on a nearby gas station to blow my allowance on candy, soda and Topps baseball cards. Secret: I never even really liked baseball cards, but my friends did, and you know what they say about peer pressure. Good thing my friends didn't like Justin Beiber. But I digress...

When we rolled out of my swagger wagon with two crowbars and a pair of gloves looking like hosts of a ghetto HGTV show, this is what stood before us:

Don't adjust your monitors, the barn is, in fact, leaning heavily to the right. Easy fix, just pull the wood on the left side of the barn, right? Not so lucky:

All gone... But the good news was that I found an easily accessible place to hide the bodies should I ever take up a career in serial killing. Holy night of terror Batman, look at this place! Regardless, we both knuckled up and went into the heart of the barn to pull 14 amazing pieces from the inside non-weight-bearing wall. All the while wondering what it would be like to have this wooden house of horrors come crashing down upon us:

After stripping what we needed to from the Last House On The Left, we loaded up the van with our cache and called it a day. Tune in soon for the fruits of our labor: an amazing (I hope) farmhouse table with real farmhouse wood (blood stains and hatched scars not included).