When my wife and I purchased this house it came with a fairly standard, low end not for real cooks kitchen. An L shaped counter with a white non descript top. A medium quality stove in the short side of the L and a sink dishwasher near the stove, and under the window, in the long side. The whole floor tiled in square foot cermaic tiles, which crack far to easily. The refridgerator was on the other side of the room and at one end of the tiled space the previous owners had the only table, a small circular one, under a ceiling fan/fixture and in front of the deck door.

 

Not really much work space. The day after we moved in I hung the two pot racks from the ceiling. We knew from the begining we would want more space and bought a table for the center of the kitchen. Which was delivered the day me moved in.

 

That green base it is sitting on was to raise it to standard kitchen counter height. It also serves as a shelf to hold stock pots and the like. The table itself is modern build but built from antique lumber and now serves to hold the spice collection, the backup knife block and the kitchen TV.

However after several years of using this table we became frustrated with it. We didn't know what the surface was finished in so we couldn't use it directly for food prep. It is difficult to clamp things to and it wasn't big enough.

I'm a decent carpenter and one of the things about this house had been the large and very empty basement. So I put in a wood shop.

Now most of my carpenter skills were gained doing stage sets. I find nothing unusual about building a table for a set that will end up with Offenbach choirines doing a Can Can in Act II on it, so I tend to build sturdy.

That is the carcass, 5/4 pine with double oak 2x4s as the legs.

You can see the first layer of the top in place, 3/4 plywood.

And here is the top, except for the oak final layer, in place. That is a piece of granite over an inch thick. It actually isn't even held down, but I don't think it is going anywhere.

And there is a better shot, complete with leveling devices. Carpenter leveling devices that is.

The carcass was faced with 3/4 oak boards, which fit exactly (by what luck I know not) into the space routed for them in the legs.

Then one end was fitted with a towel rack for storage of ladles and tongs.