The Kitchen Table

The DIY projects! I just can't stop. And I can't stop posting about them.

Our kitchen table is an old wooden hand-me-down we received when we were first married. It looked pretty dingy so when we moved to North Carolina, I decided to repaint it.

I did an AWFUL job. I had no idea there were certain techniques to employ when painting furniture, so I did pretty much everything wrong. Thick, sloppy coats, bubbles everywhere, impossible to wipe off because the polycrylic was too thin, and on top of it all, I chose the color white.
Maybe there are families out there who can handle a white kitchen table, but mine just looked like a huge mess all. the. time.

Then along came Pinterest with it's wealth of DIY knowledge and I was eager to correct my mistakes:

Ta-Da!
The worst part was the sanding. I thought it would be super quick but I was wrong. (Note - I say this line before all of my projects.)

I did such a bad job on the last go-round that the paint peeled up nice and easily. That part only took me about 20 minutes and that's when I decided to try and get back to bare wood so I could stain the top instead of repainting it.

Of course there was still the semi-decent paint job underneath mine that I had to take care of (plus some cool designs I didn't know were there!) That's what took forever to remove.
Every day for two weeks I told Seth, "I think I just have one more day of sanding and then I can move on." Two weeks. Sanding and sanding and sanding and sanding and sanding.

Anyway, once I finally finished ALL THE SANDING, I stained the top and repainted the bottom. Then I put ten coats of polycrylic on it.
Yes. TEN. I am not taking chances this time around.

I let it cure for three days and it's maiden voyage was T's Birthday Party so I was real real nervous, but it seems to have held up well in the month since then
Now I just have to repaint our kitchen chairs. (Yellow maybe?) I am procrastinating this part because it is too humid out to paint. (That's what I tell everyone. The real reason is that if I have to touch sandpaper again I will shrivel up and die.) They unfortunately suffered the same bad paint job the table did, but luckily I was lazy lazy and only did two.
We'll see how long it takes before I update you on the finished chairs....but it probably will not be any time soon.