Wedding Project: Buffet service

While the barn where we're holding our wedding already has a bar area, the bar top is long but relatively narrow. It's maybe 12" deep. Because our wedding will be buffet-style, we wanted something much larger to hold all of the food. I found this picture on Pinterest for inspiration:

Our friend Nate knows someone with a winery, so he arranged for us to borrow six wine barrels. Two of them we're going to use to support the buffet. Tim thought that he could figure out something for the top, since he volunteers at the Hope Mill. The Hope Mill is a working heritage water mill that processes local lumber. So getting the wood wasn't a problem. On Tuesday he brought the wood home and put it all together. It is MASSIVE. No word of a lie, it is three feet deep and over ten feet long. It is made from two inch thick pine, so we're estimating it weighs over 300 pounds.

Yesterday he spent the morning sanding the top down. The wood is too wide to put through a planer, so he had to rip it down as much as possible with a belt sander before switching to a palm sander. In the afternoon he stained it with Minwax Wood Finish stain in English Chestnut. It's actually quite a bit more red than it shows in my cell phone pictures.

This morning he finished it with teak oil. Now he just needs to call in a couple strong men to get it on top of the car and out to the barn. 

Our wedding: brought to you by Rustic Woods.