Repurposing a old kitchen table for an outdoor table

[Urban]

Hope you can help

I’m looking to make a garden table from a repurposed old kitchen table base and ex external door (see attached photo's).

The original kitchen table top is damaged and quite thin, so I’ll probably remove that first and then fix the door to the table base. Is this madness?

I’ll be adding some plastic feet to the bottom of the legs to keep the wood off the patio

Treatment wise what’s the best thing to try and make this last as long as possible ? I’ve used Yachting varnish on a garden bench that seemed to work well.

Ideally, I’d like to keep wood look for the base, but if need be I could prime it and use gloss exterior paint on it. Any suggestions?

 

[Eshmiel]

To an extent, the best coating for outdoor protection depends on the wood being protected. Softwoods will generally need something tough, although water's likely to creep into joints to eventually rot them anyway. Some hardwoods don't really need any treatment to survive, although they often look better with a clear coat than left to go grey with surface checks that will attract moulds and lichens to grow in the accumulated dust.

If your door is "external" it may be made of tough stuff; or just coated with tough stuff. The table is less likely to be something like iroko or oak but who knows?

The yacht varnish you mention is recommended by many although varnishes can crack and flake then need the whole lot stripping and renewing if you want to avoid the patched look. But outdoor furniture can look quite nice-rustic if patched.

Some folk just oil outdoor furniture very frequently (at least twice a year) with standard stuffs like Danish oil. Personally I've found Treatex bangkirai oil to be fairly tough and easy to renew - but things coated in it still require refreshing every year or two on tougher timbers and twice a year on the softwoods, if the natural grain and colour of the wood is to keep showing through. You can patch-renew, though, and it tends to blend the new application with the older but still-good areas.

Another alternative is a stretchy paint-stuff like Cuprinol Garden Shades. We have an outdoor shed made of softwood that's painted with this whenever it starts to look thin & worn (about every 18 months) and it does seem to stop the shed wood weathering. However, I can't speak for what's going on inside the hidden joints that are likely to get water seeping in.

 

[robgul]

We have a massive outdoor table 8' x 3'6" - the top is made from softwood scaffold boards with biscuits (for location) and pocket hole screws on the underside, as well as glue along the joints. It's finished with two Sadolin products one for colour and one for seal (can't remember what they are, the chap at Brewers recommended them) - table has been outside for nearly 3 years, no cover - and is fine. It'll get a rough sand and another treatment this spring.

Tip: If the table is staying outside uncovered - in the winter prop up the legs on one side about 100mm so that the worst of any rain, frost snow runs off and lessens the chance of soaking in.

 

[TheUnicorn]

you might want to think about routing a channel all the way around the underside of the tabletop so that excessive rain doesn't run underneath and rot out the legs. Good idea to raise the legs on plastic as you've mentioned, I've done the same on a pallet wood coffee table which has been sat outside for maybe ten years