$40 Make Over

Looking at the title, how many of you thought that I got a make over?? Come on :) Be honest. Well, I didn't but my dining room table did. And no, it's not the one Richard built me. It's a $40 find that came with a set of four chair covers and a huge custom framed picture. Don't worry the picture is getting booted. I'm replacing it with a mirror :) You can always make something better right?

This is no ordinary table. To some of you it might be...shame on you. This thing is at least 40 years old. How perfect is that? It cost me $40. But it comes with two leaves and 6 caned back upholstered chairs. The piece is gorgeous. 

The design process for the piece was a quick one. I knew I wanted to stain the table at first. But after stripping it( a pain in my b-u-t-t!!), I saw that the wood it was built with wouldn't turn out like this gorgeous table that I found on Restoration Hardware. 

Of course it would have been stained in Minwax's Classic Gray Wood Stain. Of course...right?

Well, that just wasn't in the plans for this table. You can always stain darker, never lighter. And I wasn't about to sand this thing with all of it's nooks and crannies all the way down to bare wood. I would have destroyed it.

I'm going to share some before and after's with you all and over the next few days I'm going to share with you how I did the makeover.

A Chair

Some detailing around the chair. Now the chairs haven't been touched. I've only removed the back cushions on two of them. I'm still deciding on if I want to paint the caning or not.

Isn't the caning gorgeous?

Front of the table leaves

The table top. Imagine if I had stained this??

Table edge detail

I love the details of this table. At first when we brought it home, I was going to refinish it and sell it. But then I found out it was a trestle table(something that I have wanted forever) and I just had to keep it. So the homemade Farmhouse table has found a new home on our back deck with the two benches. I hate to see it out there but hey, now we don't have to build a back porch table and benches!

Trestle base

Brass detail on the feet.

The finished prduct. Sorry for the mess. I just applied a coat of Polycrylic to the top of the table.

The color f the table took me a minute to decide on. I picked out four grays. Two from Benjamin Moore and two from Sherwin Williams. I chose Ben Moore because Ace Hardware is right up the street(and the have a 10% military discount). But I chose a completely different color. I chose Pebble Beach and I used Benjamin Moore's Advance after a few email consultations from Kate at Centsational Girl. Thank you so much for your advice, it turned out beautifully!!  I love this gray it's so soft and bright!! I also discovered, after accidentally painting my wall, that it would serve as a good paint color for the kids bathroom. Which I plan to do after The Hubbs goes to sea :) 

And look...a trash bag... I should have edited it out. Oh well. Now you know we're normal.

Look at that detail. It was a PAIN to strip. But I'll do it again :) I decided to paint the brass. I didn't think this color gray with it's blue hue would look good with brass details. Especially if the brass were restored to all it's brassy glory.

Oh look,  bad washed out picture of the top of the table. The lighting in this room is terrible. I need to invest in a new lense. Anniversary gift maybe? Hehehe...

So there it is. The Before and After's. What do you think? Please weigh in. As hard as this was, I really liked doing it. When I was finished I had a sense of accomplishment. It took a total of a week and a half to do. Or about 10-12 hours. If I hadn't of stripped it I think it would have been 4-6 hours.