Refinishing the Dining Room Table

Here's the breakdown of how I refinished the table.

Here it is before, in all of its honey oak glory:

I had been looking for a "farmhouse" type table forever, but I knew that I wanted to find a cheap one that I could refinish. I liked the chunky legs and the table top on tables like this, and Husband happened to find it at an auction with all four chairs for $25!

The chairs are SOLID, and extremely heavy. I think they are Ash.

My parents gave me a palm sander, and I was so excited to use it for the first time for this project!

We started sanding it late at night (of course), and found out that we only had 120-grit sandpaper. Not gonna do the trick.

So, the next day, we bought some 60-grit, and I spent about 2 hours sanding the entire top until it looked like this:

The rounded edges were particularly difficult.

I stained the top with a Minwax stain in Jacobean. This is what it looked like after four coats.

You could still see the knots pretty well through the stain (because they are so dense!), and I wasn't liking how it was looking.

So, I cheated a little bit, and dabbed some of Valspar's Antiquing Glaze (I cannot use the entire bottle, no matter how hard I try! Totally worth the money) on the knots and let it sit for a minute. I then blended it in with the rest of the stain. Worked like a charm! (This would only work if you are using an incredibly daaaark stain, anything lighter would show the glaze).

I put a couple of coats of poly on, and let it dry! It still needs another sanding and a coat or two, but I was too anxious to wait.

I painted the chairs the same Antique White latex paint that I got from Lowes (I think its Behr). I then bought a painter's drop cloth, ran it through the dryer, ironed it, and stapled it on to the chairs! Easy peasy!

I don't have a paint sprayer, so it took three very meticulous coats of white on the legs of the table.

I took off the horribly ugly wooden knobs and replaced them with oil-rubbed bronze ones that were left over from our kitchen cabinets.

I love the finish on the table!

Miss Kitty likes it too.

She acutally jumped on it while it was in the garage before the poly was dry, and left little kitty paw prints on it that I had to sand and re-stain. Thanks, Miss Kitty.

Loves it!

I'm linking up to:

Tweet Pin It Now!