Ace and I have been living at an on-campus apartment for about 3 months now, and it has been wonderful!
I love living in a community like this and the fact that Andrew can come home between class and work breaks is awesome; it makes for countless cooking sessions together.
Today, I wanted to share the transformation our kitchen table took once we got married. This table was a gracious gift from my in-laws. They got it used about 20 years ago (it was already beat up by the time they got it and it had already lost the leaf/extension attachment then) and somehow two chairs got lost.
This is what the top looked like before the transformation (after I sanded it down some)
And this is what the chairs looked like before- with an engraved design on the back rest
Even tough I tried really hard to like the design on the chairs, it just didn't work for me. So I took it upon myself to find a solution and, besides the "sand it down back to a smooth surface with a lot of patience and elbow grease" tutorial found online, there was no answer.
Ace and I started sanding the chairs to prep them for the first layer of paint. We gave up within 10 minutes and decided to prime them instead. We spray painted them white (It took about 1.5 cans per chair- it was quite windy), and continued to run out of paint. So, while looking for yet another can of paint at my in-laws, I came across this Speckling container- and a light bulb went on!
I spackled a thin layer and made sure to smooth it out, let it dry and repeated the process two or three more times until the surface was completely covered.
The chairs were left in the garage to dry overnight. I gave them a *light* sanding the following day (to smooth out the surface), but the scrolling was still visible.
The answer for that was another coat of paint! And this was the final result.
Don't be fooled. It still took a lot of patience and *perfect* weather for this to happen.
Ace and I picked a fabric of our liking and recovered the chair seats (I didn't take pictures of this process as there is already tons of tutorials online).
The table was another monster to tackle. Sanding the table legs took me about 2 hours... Yup! My hands were camped for hours afterwards and I also had to take quite a few breaks.
The legs received 3-4 coats of white matte paint from a Home Depot sample and it was more than enough.
The top of the table received a special treatment with a base of white wash (I applied two coats with a rag- don't be afraid to leave a thick layer, otherwise it will take more coats for the white to show up). I followed the instructions on both of these containers and sanded the table lightly between coats.
I let it dry overnight and then applied 3 coats of Walnut Express Color with another rag. This is what it looked like after one coat (Sorry, I didn't take any picture with the white wash alone but, imagine this without any of the brown- it looked like a white/ivory table)
After the second coat
And the final product after the 3rd coat. I made sure to cover the edges properly and tried to get rid of any drips after each layer.
I was very generous with the stain and applied it in the *direction of the grain* (that's not true, as you can see in the "before" picture at the top of the post, this table had a weird union jack design on the top. So, when I applied the white wash and brown stain, I made sure to apply it in long stroked going the long way to fake my way into "regular" grain).
After everything was said and done and the table top and legs had dried overnight, I added 2 layers of polycrylic with a brush. This was the top while drying
And this is what it looks like in our new home!!
What do you all think?
