Melanie and her projects

Warning: This post is a bit of a "journal" entry that gets to be somewhat long winded but this is intentional so that if I ever get the crazy idea of doing this sort of thing again, I'll rethink it and save myself the frustration. So, bear with me. I'll try to be more concise in the future.

Ok, so for those of you who know me, you know that I am always in the midst of some home improvement project or other. In our previous house, I did a lot of projects including repainting all our cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom inside and out, painting all the walls, re-landscaping the front and back yards (Ammon put in a fence all the way around too), trimmed our 7 huge full grown trees, started (and failed) several gardens, helped Ammon pull out our old carpet and get new carpet, tiled the kitchen, dining room and bathroom, and started finishing the basement all in the 3 1/2 years we lived there! Now that we're in this house, all that stuff really isn't "needed", although I would like to upgrade (don't tell Ammon). I do have some projects planned for this house though, including painting the interior walls, putting in a garden, ceiling light fixtures throughout and Ammon wants to put on a balcony coming off of our bedroom over our back porch. Still a lot to do! So, I had to start somewhere and since we now have two dining areas, I wanted to get a big dining table (without paying the big new dining table price tag, mind you) so, I knew I had another project in the making.

This "new" dining room table is my most recent project. I had never refinished a table before so I was excited to learn a new skill. It was a lot harder to do than I initially thought! Here are my various before, during and after pictures.









I found this table on Craig's List for a real steal. You can see that it was a honey oak color with dirty country plaid chair cushions to begin with. Since all our furniture in our house is dark, Ammon and I knew we wanted it to be dark too. Initially I thought I would just stain it darker but found that the stain colors weren't taking evenly. I bought soooo many products to try and make it work including an orbital sander, buffer, various shades of stain, conditioners and all the stripping and staining equipment. Quickly I could see that my "real steal" was getting expensive. This exciting little project turned into a huge, expensive and frustrating project that took up my weekends for several months and I was really getting tired of it! I didn't want to just paint it because it has beautiful grain. So, luckily I finally found just the right finish- one that had stain and top coat in one. Yeah! Once I got the product right, I still had the problem of which tool to use to get it on there well. I tried a foam brush, a roller brush and finally found a good paint brush that did the best. I got so tired of stripping, sanding and trying again that I ended up lowering my expectations a bit. There are a lot of flaws in the final product but at least it's the color we wanted...and it's DONE!! I also recovered the seats in a simple black vinyl. That way they can be wiped clean and won't stain. Whew!