Dining Room Table Redo

Do you have projects on your "to do" list that you keep putting other things in front of?  One of those things for me is our dining room table.  There are a number of reasons why. First off,  we've been getting by with a table cloth to hide the old and scuffed up finished.  Secondly, I have never refinished or stained anything in my life. I always just paint my furniture.  And lastly, it seemed like a daunting task to be without a table for a week or so.  But we put it on the priority list to complete the project this fall and we did it! Yay!


Here is the mid-century table and matching chairs that I inherited from my grandmother before:

Reid always wants to be on the blog

See how nasty the finish was?

We moved the table out on the deck and sanded it down with 120 grit sandpaper.

Then we sanded it a second time with a finer sandpaper - 220 grit I think  Some of the edges looked like this, so we just tried the best we could to sand it smooth

Next, we wiped it down with tack cloth

Then we applied 2 thin coats of stain.  We used Minwax Dark Walnut. It was a bit darker than the picture on the can, but we actually liked the end result better than the original color we were going for.

Since the grain of the wood goes in different directions and kind of makes a "V" shape on the table, it was kind of tricky to get everything even (since you are supposed to brush the stain on with the grain)

Lastly, we applied 3 coats of polyurethane.  The can said to wait 48 hours between coats, so that is why this project turned out to be so long! We also lightly sanded between coats.  I don't have any pictures of that process, but here is the end result!

So much better!

We are still in the process of waiting another 48 hours before we can use it, but at least it looks pretty!

We will tackle those chairs another time so that they all match the color of the table.  I will probably recover the seats as well.  Lately I've been wanting to do something different with the dining space. It's just a little blah.





I saw this on picture on Pinterest and immediately was inspired because the table and chairs are so similar to ours.  I love the deep teal and pendant drum light. Original source from Mint Peach.

The color reminded me of this room from Young House Love

I don't know if I'm gutsy enough to do it, but a deep color would be so much fun since every other room in the house is so light and bright.