My kitchen table was very practical.. and plain, it was nothing special but it was solid. I had been eying some french farm tables, and when I saw a blog where they had transformed their plain table into one I decided to give it a try myself. The following will give you the step by step process that I used.
Here is a pic that kinda shows how it looked before, you'll have to not mind the parfaits, but do notice that it was stained in places and worn.
I took it outside and stripped the polyurethane on the top and then sanded it.... I found out the hard way (after staining it) that you have to
sand with the grain the
entire time, not just at the end; or else you end up with ugly sanding marks. I had to strip of the stain and re-sand, that took a few hrs. Thankfully my beautiful sister came over and helped me with that part.
After I was done with that I used zins
ser oil based primer on the underside and legs, it is made for glossy surfaces so I didn't have to sand the legs at all. I wanted to make sure I had a smooth application so it took some trial and error to find the right paintbrush.
Once that was done it was time to stain, I used minwax's jacobean. The color was perfect and it was super easy to apply. I also like that it absorbed evenly, I'm not sure if that was because of the quality of the wood or the stain.
The next step was to pol
yurethane. I really wanted to make it durable.... and according to everything I read polyurethane was the thing to use, I figured if it was durable enough to be used on floors with people walking all over it,then it could stand up to my girls and their crafts, homework and table manners!
I did the poly inside, there were to many bugs getting stuck when I did it outside I did 3 coats.
My next step was to stencil the edge. I found a simple pattern that I liked and used a toasted almond color.
I used a small piece of sandpaper to make it look a little worn.
I painted the legs the same toasted almond color as the stencil. and then I used a brown glaze to give it an antique look.
The last step I used on the table was to coat it with 3 coats of
poly-acrylic I didn't want to use
polyurethane over the stencil because I read that it could yellow as it aged, it is not quite as durable, but we have been using the table for a few months now and it is holding up really well.
The next thing I had to decide was how to paint the chairs. I could have went with the simple brown but I just really wanted to do something unexpected so I painted them.......blue!
I stenciled and then used poly-acrylic on them too. I love how everything turned out. I hope that this will inspire some of you as well.
