Table done!

So, I finally got the table done! Yay! Now I have no direction in life. What shall I do? I guess we’ll need to go shopping for chairs. I thought briefly about getting unfinished chairs and finishing them myself, but it’s a much bigger pain to finish chairs than a table. We’ll probably just buy some soon. Hopefully.
Not to toot my own horn, but the table looks fantastic! It’s a bamboo tabletop with oak inlay. The table is made of bamboo flooring laid into 9 1′x1′ squares with 3/4″ oak inlay seperating them, and an 3/4″x1″ oak edging. The skirt is 5″ oak hardwood, and the legs are some kind of wood who’s name I can’t remember (I got some overstock legs from an unfinished furniture retailer in Austin — but the legs were already finished, so I had to take the finish off and re-do them.). Jodi’s request was that the table be smooth enough on top to play cards/bones without them getting caught against an edge. This table is such a table. Because it is a table soon to be in heavy use, I put four coats of polyurethane on the top and legs, and two on the skirt and underside. It should last for many many years. This is by far the best piece of furniture I have built. Of course, it has its “homemade charm” with its flaws here and there, but the flaws are endearing, not glaring. Next is a headboard and baseboard for the bed. Pictures!

Someone asked me about why I am against Walmart. Besides the general unpleasantness of the stores themselves, their business practices have reduced profit margins so severely for their suppliers than some have filed for bankruptcy (Vlasic Pickles), others have shipped all of their jobs overseas (Huffy), and still others have quit the business entirely (Lovable):
From an article at FastCompany:

“Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don’t change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.”

If, after reading the article, you feel like pummeling something, pretend you are a snow monster and swing a bat at some penguins.