Why I Built a Dining Room Table

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always thought building your own house to be the greatest achievement. I’m not talking about contracting a team to build you a custom home, I mean building your own house with your own hands. To me, this is an impressive undertaking and something I strive to accomplish myself one day.

Now, there are obviously a lot of moving parts that go into building a house. Surely, an individual doesn’t possess ALL the skills required when they set out on the mission, but in order to get the job done, they have to learn new skills on the fly, test their limits (both physically & mentally) and stay committed. It would be a long process that requires purpose and devotion to see through!

Now you guys are probably sitting here reading this thinking “Is he really comparing himself building a dining room table to someone building an entire house??” That’s definitely not the case.

Let me elaborate.

I think what interests me so much about someone building a house themselves is the fact that they were able to accomplish something independently. Whether or not they had help, they had to be useful to get it done.

I often find myself thinking about how much we rely on external things. When the power goes out, life seems to stop. If the grocery store is closed, we have no food. If a pipe bursts or a tree falls down, we have to call the handyman. I don’t believe that there has been a time in history that we have relied so much on other people, systems, or companies. I really admire individuals who have their own garden, make their own clothes, or hunt their own food. Building your own house to me is the ultimate act of being useful and independent

While I have a goal of building my own house one day, I am not a contractor by trade nor did I grow up in a family that taught me any of these skills, so I had to start somewhere!

This Fall, my girlfriend and I were moving into a new house and shopping for furniture. I was blown away by furniture prices because they really didn’t seem that hard to make…

Building my own furniture is much less of a task than building my own house, but it still incorporates a lot of the qualities that I admire so much in others who show independence and usefulness.

I learnt from watching YouTube videos and through a process of trial and error. My first project was our dining room table and I’m proud of the result. Every time I sit down to eat a meal it brings me great joy knowing I built the table with my own hands.

At the moment of writing, I’ve built our dining room table, a console table, my office desk, and our bed frame. I’m really looking forward to working on some other projects this summer, acquiring new skills, and increasing my level of independence.

Live Virtuously,

AB