This sweet little tree stump table was the result of a complete whim.
Down the road from my house, there's a path where we like to ride our bikes. There's a dead-end street and some woods along it, and it has become a dumping ground for the local landscapers. I had noticed some cool palm tree stump segments of varying heights and thought that they would look really neat grouped into 3. I wanted to use them for room decor or an outdoor side table.
Cue me sliding down an embankment in flip flops and shorts to liberate some tree stumps into the back of my SUV. I keep forgetting about the BUGS in Florida, though. Every stump that I lifted up had become home to zillions of ants, beetles and other creepy crawlies that made my skin twitch just looking at them. I did manage to find one that had landed on its end on top of a dry spot. It was somehow bug free. Trying to get back up said embankment in flip flops while lugging a stump would have been rather entertaining for anyone who happened by. I layered the trunk space with some plastic bags that I keep in the car and threw the stump in.
My original idea of just using the stumps as they were didn't seem as good now that there was only one. I had to rethink my plan.
I had some scrap OSB, so I fashioned a very high-tech compass (a pencil, nail, and piece of knitting yarn) to draw a circle on it. I then used the stump as my workbench and cut the circle out with my jigsaw. I thought it would be a very straightforward job of screwing down the tabletop, but it turns out that palm wood is very porous and the screws just pulled right out again. So, I resorted to good old Gorilla Glue, and that worked brilliantly. I'm guessing that any other wood would probably be fine with screws, but the glue was so easy. It's held up for two months now in hot, humid weather.
Here's the table before decorating (pardon the night shot):
I'll cover the table top how-to in a separate post.
Cue me sliding down an embankment in flip flops and shorts to liberate some tree stumps into the back of my SUV. I keep forgetting about the BUGS in Florida, though. Every stump that I lifted up had become home to zillions of ants, beetles and other creepy crawlies that made my skin twitch just looking at them. I did manage to find one that had landed on its end on top of a dry spot. It was somehow bug free. Trying to get back up said embankment in flip flops while lugging a stump would have been rather entertaining for anyone who happened by. I layered the trunk space with some plastic bags that I keep in the car and threw the stump in.
My original idea of just using the stumps as they were didn't seem as good now that there was only one. I had to rethink my plan.
I had some scrap OSB, so I fashioned a very high-tech compass (a pencil, nail, and piece of knitting yarn) to draw a circle on it. I then used the stump as my workbench and cut the circle out with my jigsaw. I thought it would be a very straightforward job of screwing down the tabletop, but it turns out that palm wood is very porous and the screws just pulled right out again. So, I resorted to good old Gorilla Glue, and that worked brilliantly. I'm guessing that any other wood would probably be fine with screws, but the glue was so easy. It's held up for two months now in hot, humid weather.
Here's the table before decorating (pardon the night shot):
I'll cover the table top how-to in a separate post.
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