Banishment of the Baker's Rack

Just about a year ago, I did some work on our baker's rack that made me not want to pitch it out the window anymore.  Try as I might, my hate for the stupid thing continued to fester for another year until it was just too much.  The baker's rack had to go.  We finally got our act together on a couple fronts which laid the path for banishment.  First, we (mostly) cleaned and organized the unfinished portion of our basement which allowed for some infrequently used appliances to be moved downstairs (a post on that will be forthcoming).  Second, we came up with something that looks so much better in the space the baker's rack used to occupy.

Offensive.

Look how horribly it blocked the view.  Ignore the wood in our kitchen.  Those will eventually be our built-ins.  I hope.

Back in June, we were at my parents' house and I noticed they had a vintage Singer sewing machine stand base in their garage... that my Dad was using as a base for a drill press.  I managed to convince them I could put it to much better use and they were kind enough to bring it down to us in August.  Just like all of our projects, the stand sat in the basement for 4.5 months until we finally got around to doing something with it.

We decided to build a top for the stand to use it as a little side table.  We contemplated buying a small piece of granite or marble or possible a more expensive cut of fancy wood, but decided in the end, we're cheap.  We ended up buying a 10 foot 1x4 piece of maple and a can of stain at Home Depot.  To make it look a little more interesting, I came up with this very technical and intricate pattern:

John dragged his saw and wood outside (last weekend when it was like 20 degrees out when this weekend it was 60!  Darn our luck!) and while we shivered in the cold, we cut up the wood into the 14 pieces we needed.

The chunks chillin' on the patio.

After I sanded the rough edges a bit, I stained the tops and sides of every piece.  It was the first staining project we've tried and I must say it went pretty well.

My staining station in the basement.

The pieces sat and dried overnight before John brought out his Kreg Jig and screwed in all the pocket holes to affix the pieces to each other.

Pocket holes in progress!

All the pieces screwed together.

Once that was done, all we had to do was screw our new top onto the base.  The base has four holes that we just used four one-inch screws and some washers to attach the top.  Easy peasy!  And now for the grand reveal!

We're not really sure what to put on it yet, but we're so happy with the end result.  The much smaller table doesn't block the view from the living room into the dining room and you wouldn't believe how much larger it makes the whole kitchen/dining room space feel.

Oh, I almost forgot about the stupid baker's rack.  As I mentioned, that's been banished to the basement where its job is now to hold cat litter and cans of cat food.  ha!