Island style?

Until recently, we had a blue-painted, cross-legged ten-seater table on the veranda.

It was a fine table but the benches were rotten, so we set about replacing the legs of the benches, and various other bits which were too soft to take a nail. The table itself seemed to offer a good working surface, so I knelt on top of it to cut the timber for the benches; but 'seemed' is the operative word, and to cut a painfully long story short, I ended up with badly bruised knees when the table collapsed under me - the legs literally doing the splits - and we suddenly had a whole new project in hand.

The materials, as you can see, are pretty basic: x4 scaffolding planks @ £6 each, x4 4x4" fence posts (£4) for legs, some nicely weathered offcuts from the excellent McCloys Builders' Merchants in Killyleagh for rails, and a handful of 4" galvanised nails. Grand total, £42.

We decided to leave the galvanised tin end-caps on the planks, as we quite liked the look, and also not to do any varnishing or finishing other than a quick sand, so that the table can weather and age gracefully - a process which, in the case of the scaffolding planks at least, began some years ago.