My Old Table Has a New Look Just in Time for Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving house cleaning project is wearing me out!  I need a break and I'm going to use blogging as my excuse to sit down for a few minutes.  And anyway, I'm dying to show someone my table now that it's sporting a new look.  

So, this is what it looked like before.  We bought the table about fifteen years ago at Ikea in Chicago before we built our current house.  I always liked the style of the table, but was never really fond of the knotty pine look- just too many knots, but it was a really good buy for a real wood table, so we purchased it.  It was always just finished with a clear coat.  I knew that one of these days, I would do something else to it, but I didn't expect it to take me fifteen years!

I decided to paint the bottom a white that would go with the adjacent cabinet, and I wanted to stain the top a darker color so that the knots wouldn't be so noticeable.  I settled on Amy Howard at Home- One Step Paint in Ballet White, and Minwax Gel Stain in Chestnut.

I sanded away that clear finish...inside the house.  I don't know what I'm thinking sometimes...maybe I just like to dust.  

When it was sanded down to bare wood, I applied a Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner (also by Minwax) that is supposed to make the stain go on more evenly.  When that was dry, I applied my first coat of stain.  The instructions said to apply liberally, which I did...then after three minutes, I wiped off the excess.

I then did it all again for the second coat of stain.  Here I'm showing a pic just after second coat application...Isn't it pretty?

This is what I had when the excess stain had been wiped away.

I was a little disappointed with the color of the top.  It's just not as dark as I had hoped for. It seemed like the wood just didn't want to soak up the stain.  I'm thinking that original clear coat had permeated the soft pine wood so that it was still sort of sealed even though it looked like I had sanded it down to bare wood.  Anyway, I thought about a third application, but it just seemed to be sitting on the top surface and wiping back off, so I think it would have been a waste of time.  I just decided to go with this.  It is still darker than the original look, and the knots don't stand out like they did before.  

After the stain had dried completely, I applied a satin polyurethane finish to the top and painted the bottom with the white.  The bottom part took two coats of paint, but it's a one-step paint, so I shouldn't need to topcoat it.

I could hardly wait for the second coat of polyurethane to dry so that I could clean up around the table, put the chairs back around it and take pictures!  

It looks so much better now with the antique cabinet.  The addition of the white just makes it work.

Now, I need to get up and dust...the entire house.

I was not compensated in any way by Minwax or Amy Howard at Home.  I'm just sharing what I used.

Judy

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