We've just completed a refurbishing effort in order to breathe some extra life into our IKEA garden chairs and tables. As we had two of each set, it was the perfect opportunity to remedy one of the faults of the table: its size. A loose napkin-calculation later and we have a Siamese IKEA table.

The table in its finished state.

The old wood was living its final days, as cracks appeared and planks started twisting. Some had broken completely, leaving some chairs unusable. However, the metal underpinnings are still in reasonable shape. Surprisingly enough, IKEA made everything pretty water resistant.

Doing the refurbish was simple enough. Remove the planks and look for new wood that could be cut into dimensions that resemble the old planks. The closest I could find was 16mm thick impregnated RNG, which is slightly thicker than the original ones, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Already weather resistant, it provides a nice basis for further refinement.

One of the old planks in contrast to the new ones.
Sanded down and ready for putting on the protective oil.

After having the rough cuts, I sanded everything down with 40 and 80 grit respectively. Never having worked with this type of wood for more detailed things, it was surprisingly nice to handle. Then a coat of Osmo oil to leave the wood in its final state, ready to be screwed onto the metal underpinnings (using euroscrews, the fat and short ones). The final result is rather pleasing: we could recover the furniture and refurbish it for a relatively minor sum of money, hopefully it'll last us another couple of years!

The table's surface, smooth and oiled.