Door Table Update! Step 2's

First off, the next steps taken on the DIY dining table. A new crazy work schedule (I recently was promoted to managing my own store, hours, hours!) postponed my work on the table all week. BUT, for the first few days everytime I checked the Ikea leg pieces for solidity and dryness in the stain, it was still a lil sticky. So, hectic work actually worked in my favor here.
Today, I decided to screw all the damn pieces together. I was tired of looking at them drying. I still had the underside of the pieces to stain, but I figured I could do that when the pieces were all together, bc, hey, they were the underside pieces...who's going to be scrutinizing my craftsmanship there???

(p.s. I did have a friend over this evening who gave me the raised eyebrow and mentioned the integrity of my "craftsmanship"...meh, whatever, I'm not gonna be looking at the underside of my damn table.

ANYWAY: rant aside...

Here's what I started out with after putting the half stained pieces together:


Ikea thinks it's ok to have the gross big screw holes visible on their furniture..


Wood filler fills them nicely..


The finished product after full stain, upside down since I was working on the underside of the pieces..


This is taking so much longer than I originally anticipated...but I can attribute it to the slow stain setting times on the Ikea finish (literally 3-4 days) and my super busy schedule. Oh well, these two days off will prove fruitful no matter what!