Kitchen Table Re-do

Our kitchen table had seen better days. In fact, it has seen over 11 years of days filled with sunlight, laughter, markers, glue, paint, sticky honey, family dinners, and everything else that happens at a family table. I love our table and didn't want to get rid of it, but it was time for a fresh new look.

The old paint was a buttercream yellow with antiquing, and I decided to change it to ivory.

The tabletop finishing had suffered the most wear and tear, so we decided to sand it all the way down to raw wood and stain it the color of our kitchen cabinets.

Mike came along kicking and screaming, knowing that it would be a lot of work. He was a good sport to sand most of the table on the first Saturday, and warned me not to be alarmed if it took us three weeks to finish. I vowed it wouldn't let it take that long!

I spent the next two weeks sanding. The back wouldn't come off our chairs so I had to hand sand around each piece.

I tried staining a chair, but ended up using a brush which applied way too much stain. Mike patiently sanded the whole thing again. We also realized that the stain was showing all of our electric sander's motions in the wood, so I went back over everything again with a 220 grit sandpaper, being careful to follow the grain, and also hand sanded all the nooks and crannies again!

He took the legs off of everything for me so I could spray paint it all ivory. The paint I used was Rustoleum Heirloom White satin.

In the meantime, I stained the wood with MiniWax Expresso stain from Home Depot, using a cloth instead of a brush, and it turned out the perfect color! I had to stain the chair seats first, then tape them off to paint the backs.

I was hoping that once the legs were put back on and everything was painted, I could just spray each piece with a clear enamel spray paint to protect it, but it started making the ivory wrinkle and crack. I was so frustrated because that meant more sanding, taping, and spray painting.

I was so tired of going without our table, I actually just did the clear coat on the stain only and put it in the dining room without clear coating the ivory.

Our first dinner on the new table!

After a few days of rest, I tried another type of spray clear coat and lightly sanding all of the ivory before spraying, and it went much better. I have yet to do the last three chairs... just ran out of steam. (And guess who was right... it has been three weeks!)

In any case, you get the idea! The (mostly) finished product!

I thought about antiquing the ivory like it was before, but I am loving the cleaner look so I think I'll just leave it ivory for now! It looks so pretty in our dining room and goes much better with our kitchen, so I am very happy with it, despite the blood, sweat, and tears.

Now I need new curtains! I always laugh because you think you'll be happy with one change, but it snowballs into more.