Ah kitchen tables. I always go back and fourth with my feelings for them. In my old apartment I ended up tossing the one I had because I found that I never actually ate at it. It just became the place where all my crap went. When I moved into the house I was delighted to find a table with some medieval looking chairs to go with it (pure sarcasm.) The table itself was not terrible but the chairs had to go. A year later I am finally taking care of that!
I must say the one thing I promised myself was that I wouldn’t allow the table to get full of clutter and I have lived up to it because it is always free of crap. In fact several people have said that since I’ve moved in it’s the first time they’ve seen what the kitchen table looks like! I guess I wasn’t the only one with that issue!
We actually use this table everyday. Frank comes home for lunch everyday and this is where we eat so keeping in mind that other than being a piece in the room I needed to make sure that the top got some good protection when redoing it.
The first step was getting new chairs. I love the look of tables with wood tops and white legs so that’s what I was going to try to achieve. I donated the chairs to Good Will and purchased these 4 chairs from Target.
I had decided that the table top stain would be Weather Oak so those yellowy chair seats wouldn’t really work. As soon as the chairs arrived I sanded the seats down with my palm sander and restained them with the Weathered Oak. You can see below the 3 seats I sanded and the one I hadn’t done yet.
Then I applied the stain and then the wax to seal it all in.
Ok so chairs are done now it’s time to get to the table! I worked on it outside since I would be using the sander. Here is the table.
This table top clearly needs some TLC.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret product that will save your life doing this and that’s Rock Miracle. It seriously is a miracle! You guys this stripper is better than anything you’ll see at Chippendales! And just like the real deal you need to make sure you wear protection!
A throw away brush will be helpful for you to apply the product on and make sure that your putty knife is flexible so when you’re scraping off the varnish you don’t dent the wood.
I read about a few strippers online and most of them required you to apply the stripper and let it sit for awhile, sometimes for hours. Not this stuff! I put it on and by the time I was done applying it I started scraping it off. It started to eat away at the varnish immediately and I found it easier to scrape off when it was still wet rather than let it dry.
You’ll want to toss the varnish away in a metal or glass can. It will eat away at plastic so don’t even try it. After one pass I applied another layer and scraped it away. I did this 4 times until all the varnish and a few layers of stain were removed.
Next step was to start sanding down to the bare wood. I used a medium grit and then a fine grit to smooth it all out.
I love the different tones within the wood. I brushed on a thick coating of the Weathered Oak stain and left it on for 10 minutes and then wiped it off.
After giving it 24 hrs to dry I applied the protective wax and buffed off. Once done I flipped the table over to start working on the legs.
I was planning on priming so I didn’t go crazy sanding but some areas really needed it.
After smoothing it all out I put on 2 coats of Zinsser oil based primer and then Benjamin Moore paint in White.
Ok…let’s take a look back at the before so you can appreciate the after. I AM OBSESSED!!
AFTER:
There are so many things I love about this table. The chairs alone make such a dramatic difference. The chair backs are so much lower than what we had that you have more sight of the kitchen and even the view outside the sliding door. The fact that it’s so much lighter brightens the room and it feels like we gained more space in the kitchen even thought we didn’t. And let’s talk about the tabletop, ugh..love it so much!
There’s nothing like making something old look brand new!
