Picnic Table Revelation

Our picnic table is a bit of a mess, all because of several bad moves on my part, of course. Chalk it up to inexperience and the early stages of my real man training, but I did some things incorrectly, and the table suffers accordingly. First off, I constructed it wrong. Several of the holes were pre-drilled, so I just screwed in the bolts, but something isn’t right. I think I may have reversed the boards or something, but the seat is too high, and as a consequence, the space between the seat and table is too narrow, making it hard to get your feet in if you’re over the age of twenty.

I spaced the seat joists too far apart, and the seat flexed too much, so I had this brilliant idea to put a supporting beam beneath it. While this does give support, it in my opinion makes the seat hard as a rock. You need some flex, even just a little, to make it more comfortable. Finally, I used the wrong stain. Since it’s a table we’re going to eat on, I used an eco-friendly stain, which was really meant for indoors. It looked good at first, but after the first winter, the stain started falling apart, and now it looks terrible. Plus, we used that table to make dumplings, and it’s really taken a beating.

My initial reluctance in fixing the table stemmed from the difficulty I foresaw in removing the screws, which were set in pretty far. Then I realized I could, if need be, just cut them with my reciprocating saw. Problem solved. Also, if I needed to, I could just bore new holes to hold the carriage bolts. Then, I’ll sand it and put on a more durable stain.

It’s amazing what you can do with some power tools. The hardest thing will be to just get started.

Until then, thanks for reading.