Before and After: Our Kitchen Table

This past weekend my younger brother married his amazing fiance.  It was an absolutely beautiful wedding.  I want to share all of it with you, but it might take me a little while.  Until then, here is an update on a DIY project.

We have been living without a kitchen table for over a year.  I hate to admit it, but we ate most of our meals on the couch in front of the TV (sorry, Mom and Dad).  In our previous homes we had a beautiful kitchen table, but it has been in storage because of our limited space.  (Welcome to city living!) 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I found a small kitchen table for two on craigslist for $20.  The only problem was that I hated the color – it wouldn’t look right in our place.  But my friend, Erica, inspired me to make this my first furniture DIY project.

 

We could not be happier with the results!  Although there is certainly room for improvement with our next DIY projects, we loved that we got to put our own blood, sweat, and tears into this one (okay, no blood, but definitely sweat and tears).  I just love our craigslist treasure.

 

Here are the before and after pics:

Before

After

         Our process for re-doing the table was as follows:

• Sand the table top using 100-grit sandpaper
• Apply first layer of stain
• Wipe off excess stain
• Allow stain to dry
• Sand the table top again using 320-grit sandpaper
• Apply second layer of stain
• Wipe off excess stain
• Allow stain to dry
• Touch up areas that looked like they needed more stain (uneven staining)
• Paint table legs black
• After stain has dried, apply clear coat
• Repeat steps 1-8 with chairs
• Only exception was to use a tack cloth in between sanding and staining (learned this lesson a little late)

Few fun notes from our project...

• Our motto quickly became “Life is not perfect and neither is our table.”  It was repeated often during this process.
• Apparently we should have been using something called a tack cloth to clear the sawdust.  We didn’t learn that until the chairs.  If you look closely, there might be some sawdust lacquered into the table.  It gives it character, right.
• It has been decided that we will never again stain chairs.  Table tops are one thing, chairs are another.
• There were at least 25 phone calls and seven FaceTimes made to Mom and Dad during this process.  THANK YOU!

Here are a few more action shots (there are no shots of the chairs b/c we were too annoyed to stop and take pictures)...