Farm House Table

The Barton Tree Farm was established by William Jackson Barton Sr. in the early 70's. The farm boasts 89 acres, most of which is covered by loblolly pines and harvested for construction timber. The farm is located in Clyo, Georgia.

Over the years, the farm has served many uses -- at one point it was a rental property, another housing bees for honey production; but it has always been a tree farm.

In recent years, the boom of shabby chic and DIY has taken over. The economy has forced the crafty to use their talents to make the old, new again. This was our such venture to the Barton Tree Farm. An old farm house, destroyed by a hurricane decades ago sits, lopped in place by vines and brick foundation. it was my goal to collect the forsaken wood paneling from the house and restore it for my creation.

I planned a trip from Atlanta to Savannah for the weekend. Savannah being only an hour from Clyo, seemed like the legitimate place to stay. It only took about an hour to gather the wood from the famr house. The wood was discolored, gnawed and broken. It was stained green from aging and I started to doubt my project. Still, we gathered enough wood to make 2 farm house tables.

Once I returned with the wood to Atlanta, the cleaning process began. JCP scrubbed the wood with a Clorox and water mix to clean the wood. Then, he carefully rinsed each panel.

We had to wait till the next day for the wood to dry.

Being novices, we needed a flat surface to construct the table. Our uneven backyard, simply was not going to work. We moved the project to the front yard and began to hammer.

Much to our surprise, we drew quite a crowd as the neighbors began to marvel at what we could possibly be constructing.

We even had an artist stop by and invite us to the Atlanta Auction House. He explained that he created furniture out of industrial materials. He remarked on the quality of the wood. We even ended up attending the Auction that Friday, but that is a story for a different post!

True to form, our Dachshund, Mosby, is in almost every aspect of our lives. He helped with determining stability of the table.

We used a few tutorials off Pinterest to get our barrings and then started hammering away. In hindsight, I see why screws are better. Nails tend to come loose with movement over time.


The last touch for the table was to sand the top, stain it, paint the base and legs, then to put finishing oil on the stained top. Sounds like a lot, but really just a bunch of painting. The wood was extremely dry being so old and subjected to the elements for decades. It drank up the stain immediately. We went a little darker than we wanted to because of this, but the finished product was still great!