What top would an old fashioned kitchen table have?

Pitlanepiglet

Whoops - title ought to say "what TOP would an old fashioned kitchen table have" (who says I can multi task!)

We need a kitchen table to use for pastry/bread making and as additional work space and storage space (hooks on the end etc) and as A. we're skint and B. I'm tight and C. we have loads of offcuts of wood, hubby is going to construct something.

He's made a fab workbench for his workshop so he's up to the job but I wonder what we should use to make the table top? What did old fashioned tables have on the tops - tiles? Presumably not a solid piece of wood as that would be pricey?

Any thoughts for something cheap and cheerful that would work as a top for pastry/bread etc.

Penelope_Penguin

I'd use wood if you have it - grout in tiles on a worksurface are a b****r to clean

Would you like to edit your title - it makes no sense as it is

Penny. x

Pitlanepiglet

Ahh now I've found how to edit the title!

The trouble is that finding a solid table top will be tricky, what we have are a number of long offcuts of decent wood but it will be planks next to each other rather than a solid top (IYSWIM). We had a trolley with a tiled top and it wasn't too bad...

geordie_joe

Back in the 60's we had a kitchen table that had lino on the top.

I also remember going to Beamish in the 80's and seeing a woman baking/kneading bread on a table that was planks on the top and covered in lino.

Also, in 1975 we moved into a house where all (both) the kitchen units were plank tops with thick lino on top.

JayJay14

I see no reason why you could not use planks - old kitchen tables would have been made that way. The thing to be careful about would be the joins, if you are useing the top for food prep you don't want to have bacteria filled cracks. If OH uses wood glue in between the planks and then rubs it down thoroughly and then varnishes with something really tough (yacht varnish?) it would be a useful surface to have.

The really good type of top would be a butchers block type - its made by glueing block of wood together to make a slab, then sanded. They look fantastic You could google it - a quick look found this http://www.doityourself.com/stry/build-a-butcher-block-table-top but there will be others I'm sure.

I don't like the idea of the tiles myself, but that would be just me.

mary-op

Mt gran had a pine scrub top table........the sort that was used for ironing, me and my brother playing, gran making pastry etc. and then she'd pop a cloth over it for meal times.
We've got similar. OH made it -bought the turned legs from a supplier and put planks on the top. We scrub it every so often and its used for my craftwork as well as mealtimes.............no cloth, just place mats.

Pitlanepiglet

Thanks all....

Lino - now that's something I hadn't thought of....I wonder whether it might be worth having a temporary top to use when we make bread/pasty - a bit like the liners that we use for baking trays and then just roll it up when we've finished with it? Might be a bit of a faff though...

Jay Jay thanks for your ideas, you're right a decent amount of glue and varnish could produce a fairly solid surface that might avoid the gaps between the planks. The DIY butchers block also looks good though, I wonder whether OH would have the patience for it though!

Hmm food for thought....

cheerfulcat

FWIW - our kitchen table top is made up of old planks, sanded and then varnished by OH with a two-pack varnish, v. hard wearing.

geordie_joe

Pitlanepiglet wrote: »

Thanks all....

Lino - now that's something I hadn't thought of....I wonder whether it might be worth having a temporary top to use when we make bread/pasty - a bit like the liners that we use for baking trays and then just roll it up when we've finished with it? Might be a bit of a faff though...

I think it would be a bit of a faff to keep rolling it up, especially when your kitchen is cold.

If you have room to store it, you could glue it to a sheet of plywood which would make it easy to take off the table and store.

Or perhaps you could cut the plywood slightly smaller than the table and have some sort of shelf under the table top to store the plywood/lino sheet. In fact it wouldn't have to be a shelf, two cross bars would be enough.

HariboJunkie

50's tables would have been covered in a sort of melamine surface. To replicate it you could use any old wood as the top and cover it with oilcloth which you could staple to the underside like this.

grandmasam

Hi ,when i married 'the farmer' in the late 60's, the kitchen table was 2 wide planks of wood, scrubbed with salt every week and for baking and rolling out pastry,i covered the top with oilcloth,easy to wipe clean,especially with 4 littlies 'helping'!! Acually, most of the other local farmers wives had kitchen tables like this,about 2-2 1/2 ft wide, just 2 planks,and we all used the oilcloth,now there are such pretty pvc cloths,or off the roll [doesn't need hemming]
caz