Gramma's Kitchen Table Makeover

This past weekend, I finally decided I wanted to tackle the beast. AKA our kitchen. Our kitchen is the typical out-dated kitchen, fully equipped with dark wood cabinets, burgundy walls and the previous owners signature sponge patterned walls with matching outlet covers. I set the plan in motion and started with my grandparents kitchen table. 

I cannot type the word "grandparents" without tears coming to my eyes. We lost my Grandad in 2008 and my Gramma most recently in August of '13. My mom has pictures of me as a little girl eating breakfast with my granddad and making cookies with my gramma at this table. I have so many wonderful childhood memories and even adolescent memories of countless Thanksgivings and Christmas's at the "kids table". It means so much to me to have this piece furniture in my very own home. 

This past weekend was so gross out. We did the majority of our painting inside, but had to take the table out to our covered porch to do the sanding. Starting with 50 grit, then working my way up we went to 80, 120, 220 trying to get down to the actual wood beneath the layers and layers of polyurethane my granddad had put on there when he had it refinished. I needed to get down to the wood so that it would take the new stain.

Not even kidding, after about an hour of sanding with 2 different sanders (square and a 360 sander for the rounded edges) and 4 sheets of sand paper, the poly was finally coming off. I cleaned it off all the dust with a dry rag, then went over it with a damp paper towel. This was to make sure I got all of the dust off of the table so that I wouldn't trap it underneath the new stain. I also took the damp paper towel to moisten the wood and to hopefully open up the grain so that the wood would take the stain. 

I knew I wanted a dark walnut stain to go on the top only, but when we got to Lowe's, Andrew found an even darker stain called "Kona" by Rust-Oleum. It was perfect!

I applied the stain with an old ratty t-shirt. I dipped it in the stain and started from the outside and worked my way in.

DIY projects are FULL of trial runs and screw ups, so at first we didn't shake the can of stain (because I didn't read the directions) and we got this...

I thought, "what the in the world!!!!!!!! It looks exactly the same" It looked nothing like the picture. So Andrew read the directions out load, we shook the can up and tried it again.

MUCH BETTER!!! This was the desired color! While we let the stain dry (directions said about an hour) we tackled the chairs. I fought hard for turquoise, but in the end, we settled on Annie Sloan's "Old White" Chalk Paint.

With Chalk Paint, it's not like a normal paint. No sanding or prepping necessary. I painted right over top of the polyurethane on the chairs and bottom half of the table. You apply the first coat just enough to cover it. There is no need to slap it on thick and cover everything in the first coat. It is going to look awful and streaky and you might have your doubts, but in the end it is worth it!

The amazing thing about Chalk Paint, is that it drys so quickly. Each chair took about 45 minutes to paint. Had the legs been square and not round, it would of gone a lot faster. Needless to say 45 minutes X 4 chairs gave them each plenty of drying time and were ready for a second coat the moment I finished the 4th chair. 

I'm really particular about paint brush streaks, so to decrease as much of them as possible, I got an aluminum  pie pan (because I could just depose of it when I was finished and not have to worry about washing paint out of something I actually use regularly), filled it with water. I barely kissed the tip of my paint brush in the water before I dipped it into my paint can. The second coat was much smoother when the brush was wet, almost eliminating paint brush streaks! The paint almost falls onto the furniture and it's easier to spread out.

I'm going to let you know, this took an entire weekend. I'm trying to learn to start a project and finish it completely before moving on to the next one. We drug this little project into Sunday morning. Even left over night, the stain (because we had to do two coats) was still a little tacky, so I went back to the chairs to do some distressing.

With 220 grit (very smooth sandpaper) I started at the top of the chair and worked my way down. I sanded through the paint just until the wood started to show through as to not over do it. I tried to put stress marks in places where I thought "if this chair were really old and distressed, where would it be stressed?"

 (side note, we are not alcoholics/wine bottle hoarders. My soon to be father-in-law makes wine, so we save all our bottles we buy so that he can fill them up with his wine!)

The seats of the chairs have butt grooves, so I stuck to sanding where the grooves were and would most likely have been used a lot.

 Another thing about Chalk Paint is that it has a rough texture to it. It doesn't feel smooth like a latex or acrylic paint. To make the seat smooth I did one coat of polyurethane to smooth out the texture. Then, I took steel wool and buffed the poly to get rid of any air bubbles. We also polyurethaned the top of the table because it is going to get the most abuse. Plus we want to protect the top from water stains and food.

I'm in love with the way this table turned out. It is the center piece of the room. I can't wait to put some new color on the walls and a rug underneath to complement the Old White.

Be sure to check back to see our kitchen transform piece by peace!

xoxo