Thursday, August 13, 2009

Table Project

I decided to tackle the kitchen table and chairs refinishing project a few weeks back with some guidance from my very generous neighbor. I got my supplies, laid everything out and then tentatively began the large project of sanding the chairs and prepping them for painting.

Luckily I was informed that I didn't need to sand as much as I thought, since I was painting, and using spray paint would be a lot faster!!

So I dived into painting after my sanding ventures and low and behold they came out quite nicely. Actually a little better than I thought.


Although my right hand and arm were very, very sore from spray painting soo long which I didn't think was possible but for two days I was fairly useless with my right appendage. Luckily I had some very helpful neighbors to assist and play around in my garage with me!!





The table top I wanted to restain it a warm cherry color which would prove to be the bain of my existence!!

After stripping the old varnish, sanding away for a few hours Jesse went out and got me rougher sand paper and sanded down that table in less than an hour, making it look brand new!! In my haste to get the project over and done with I opted out of sanding the table with the finer sand paper and convinced Jesse that we could just put the stain on.



That is when all my good luck came to a screeching halt and my table has been stuck in this state of disarray. We applied the stain and it was looking fairly dark which Jesse assured me would lighten up. Yeah...not so much!!! My dreams of an easy and fast refinishing job were squashed when the next day my table looked like it was painted a blah red/brown color instead of a beautiful brown with a hint of red stain. After dragging my leaf into Four Chairs to see if they could help me figure out what to do next it was advised to try paint thinner to pull up some of the stain and then to take varnish remover to try to get it off as well.

After leaving the state and then having family in town the project has remained in its unfinished state in the garage!! Last night I began my feeble attempt to respark my interest in the project but it is not very fast moving thus my interest is lacking to say the least. My mom suggested to just paint it so I would move onto reupholstering the seat cushions so that one day in the near future I would have a kitchen table again. Oh no, that makes me just want to try all my options before throwing in the towel by painting that darn thing!! So hopefully I will be successful tonight and will be restaining and it turning out and me finishing it!! Aaahhhh now that would be nice!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is a big project. Wood stain will come out darker on rough wood, such as the cut end of a 2x4 or in this case a table sanded with course paper. I think if you resand it with course paper maybe it will take off most of the color then go back over it with a fine grit paper and make it very smooth. Are you sanding by hand or do you have an electric sander? It's worth the money to get one of those... or maybe rent one from Home Depot. Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

Dink said...

Thank you I enjoy any cents that I get!!! I will try that becuase nothing else has worked!!!

Aubrey said...

ah, good luck! let me know how it goes. i've been thinking about paiting my table and chairs but since we moved into this old house i have a gazillion other projects on my list first. I finally did the first on my list- spray painted the old gold grandma light fixtures a nice hammered brass/bronzed look like we had at the townhome. looks a ton better. :)