WEST ELM INSPIRED SOLID WOOD DINING TABLE FOR $150

my old dining table

This is a photo of our old dining room table. We bought it many years ago and it now just looks boring and dated. What I do love about this table are the hidden extensions, and because of that reason alone I considered keeping it. But honestly, I just no longer like the overall look, and it’s only partly solid wood the rest is veneer so it just wasn’t worth saving.

I started looking for a new dining table and found a few I liked, but West Elm’s Emmerson table ranked at the top of my list.

Unfortunately, the $1300 price tag (and that doesn’t include tax or shipping!) ranked at the bottom of my list.

After not finding anything I liked in my budget, I decided I had no choice but to make my own dining room table.

I am most definitely not a carpenter or furniture maker. I am still learning some basic wood working skills so I knew I’d do best with a tutorial to follow. I scoured the web and was unable to find a tutorial that exactly copied the Emmerson table, but I did find something similar here at Decor and the Dog.

I love their outdoor table and would love to make one for our back deck once we finally get our backyard nicely done… but that’s still down the road a ways.

For now, I was just hoping to be able to make an indoor version of this table that looked presentable 🙂 .

With some help from my husband and a new miter saw and kreg jig, we managed to make our own version of the Emmerson dining table…

I am really happy with how it turned out and it only cost around $150! I like that this table mixes the weathered rustic look with modern style.

I used all pine wood and stained it with a mixture of Rust-Oleum Weathered Gray and Minwax Provincial similar to what I used for the base of my sideboard.

I made a few changes to the tutorial though…

First, theirs was made from pressure treated wood for outdoor use and since mine was going to be used inside I didn’t use treated wood.

Second, the tutorial table was 96” long and I knew that would take up too much space in my dining room so I shortened mine to 85” which makes it still large enough to seat eight people.

Third, their table used two 6×6’s for each of the legs and I used three 4×4’s instead. I was unable to find 6×6’s that weren’t pressure treated at the local home improvement store and didn’t want to wait to have something ordered online delivered. But I felt like the 4×4’s would likely look better proportionally with my table anyway since my table is smaller than the one in the tutorial. And now that it’s all done I can see it looks good.

And lastly, I added a horizontal beam–made from a 2×4–to the bottom of the table in order to give it a similar look to West Elm’s Emmerson table.

This table involved some hard work, but the tutorial was very easy to follow. Even with an old belt sander it was still a beast to sand. But I am grateful to have made something beautiful for our family to enjoy while saving myself over $1150 in the process. I’m looking forward to eating holiday dinners at this baby 🙂 !

WANT MORE? See my final dining room makeover reveal here!