First Order of Business in New Shed- Make Larger Tabletop

My dad made our kitchen table for the first apartment that I had in Anchorage, which was in a fully furnished basement apartment.  It fit four people comfortably, but it was very small, due to the fact that it was built to fit our old apartment. 

So, once I had the space in the new shed, I put our new "wood shop" to the test and built a wider table top.  I built it out of oak that I found at Lowes for the trim, and pine (knotty and clear) for the middle and side pieces.  It was literally copied off of my dad's style, but I like his style!!!

Anyway, I just built the top, using biscuits to attach the planks and dowel pins + plugs to attach the trim on the outside. 

This is what it looked like most of the way through the biscuiting process:

Then, I obviously had to cut the short edges where all the pieces were different lengths.  First, I tried using a Jig saw, but it has a bendy blade and it wouldn't cut 90 degrees everywhere.  Then, Eric and I set it up to use the table saw... DISASTER.  Finally, I set up a bunch of guides and just used a circular saw.  The only problem there was that our blade was very very dull.  However, it cut just fine. 

When the pieces were put together, blemished filled with DAP, and sanded it looked like this:

Table top all but finished

At this point I was celebrating because, hey, it was sanded and "just had to be finished."  I learned a very important lesson in the coming days... varnishing is thankless, tedious, and boring.  It's still very important, but YEESH.  So, 4 days and 4 coats of satin minwax waterbased varnish later... I attached the table to the original stand that my dad made and... Viola!!!!

I LOVE IT!!!