kitchen table make-over

Helllooooo :). I'm really bad at blogging. I think about what I want to put on the blog a lot, but I am bad at actually putting out the effort to get my thoughts/projects/what we're up to on the blog. I thought life would slow down once summer came. It did not, so now I'm hoping life will slow down now that school is back in session. Probably not :). Even though life has been a tad bit busy as of late, we (Brian and I:) are really thankful for where God has brought us and to be a part of a lot of great things going on in our lives and in the life of Station Hill, and blessed with some great friends to spend time with and together live life with. God is good. In the midst of the craziness, I have found time to do some projects at our house. One of the things I recently worked on was staining our kitchen table. We have received quite a bit of furniture, for FREE, from our families. So blessed and so thankful. Our kitchen table came from Brian's Granny's house. It is a really beautiful table, but the color of the wood didn't really fit with all of the dark wood in the rest of our house. I have been wanting to try to stain it for awhile now, but I have been a little bit nervous about messing it up and not being able to make it look beautiful again. I read a bunch of tutorials on staining tables, and I finally decided to give it a chance. Here are a few before pictures:

The last one is the table with out the extra leaf in the middle. We decided to keep it with the leaf in it. It fits the space better.

Here is what I did:

Sanded the top of the table and the seat of the chairs for a LONG time. The wood was super shiny, so it took me a long time to get it to the point where the wood was no longer shiny and felt a little bit rough. The stain soaks in better when the shiny surface is gone. Then I wiped the table and chairs down and let them dry. To stain the table, I brushed on a layer of dark walnut stain and let it soak and then wiped off the excess with a washcloth. I let the stain dry, lightly sanded the table again, and put on another layer of stain. I did this three times. I don't think I let the stain soak in long enough before wiping it off so I had to do multiple coats to get it dark enough. After the 3rd coat had dried, I brushed on a coat of clear polyurethane (satin finish). I sanded it after it dried and then re-applied a second coat. I let the table dry for 24 hours, and then I lightly sanded the table again to give it a distressed look.

For the chairs: After they were sanded, I primed them and then painted them white to match the rest of the chair. I am planning on distressing the edges using the same color stain that I used on the table. I will do that soon and post a picture :).

Here is the finished product. Thankfully I didn't mess it up too bad. I think once the chairs are distressed I will like the look of the table a lot more.

I'm not sure why I have been so scared of staining this table for so long. It was definitely a lot easier and harder to mess up then I expected :). I'll blog about some of my other projects soon. Here is the recent project I did for our bedroom (the "every day I love you" canvas) that I will blog about once I put a picture in the frame :). Then it will be complete.

Have a great Monday!