The Farmhouse look has been in for a few years now. I recently re-finished our dining room table so I thought I’d share the results!
When Matt and I were first married, we moved into a home that (finally!!) had a dining room! (Read more on our story HERE!) This of course meant we would need a table to put in the room.
I feel like I say this all the time, but I do not like spending money on something I know I could make or do myself. Especially because I know I’ll have control of the final outcome. (The quintessential “DIY-er”, am i right?!)
Naturally, we started searching in thrift stores and consignment shops and eventually found a GREAT deal on a sturdy 5 piece dining set! We were thrilled!
Now, if you’ve read my DIY Drop Cloth Headboard post, you’ll know I’ve gone through many decor “phases” in our marriage. (I’m assuming that’s y’all too and not just me??)
DINING ROOM TABLE MAKEOVER TAKE #1
Our first, “look” was a black, white, grey and a pop of aqua theme. (How 2010’s of us right?) So I, of course, decided to gel stain ALL our “new” (thrifted) furniture for the new house… black.
It didn’t look…awful… (I cringe looking back at these photos.) The black look worked for a while until I realized I wanted a more “light and airy” look to our house.
Slowly but surely we painted all our furitnate white or a nice “farmhouse stain.”
DINING ROOM TABLE MAKEOVER TAKE #2
At the time, my first baby was a little under a year old so I didn’t have a ton of time to truly re-stain or paint our table properly. The first go-round refinishing my black gel stained table, I just spray painted the legs white as well as the under hang trim.
(I flipped the table over after covering and tapping the top with brown paper so I could paint the trim underneath the lip of the table too.)
The white turned out nicely. Since I was in such a hurry to finish the table, having a 1 year old and all, I (foolishly) just “stained” the top of the table with a dark walnut OVERTOP the black gel stain…
You can imagine how, let’s say, interesting this looked. I mean, it gave the right “farmhouse” effect -from far away-ish. The table looked like it had some odd layers of brown paint on the top rather than a nice stain that you can see the wood grain through. (Which is the best part!)
At first I didn’t hate it. The colors worked for what I was going for (and if you know me you know I’m not a perfectionist!). Over time, as I refinished and repurposed other pieces in our home, the finish and the look of the tabletop started to bother me!
FINALLY HAD THE TIME
I did my best to work with what I had and just live with it. At the time, there were so many other things I was busy with, I didn’t have a moment to spare with a new baby on the way or even more so, after I delivered (I had QUITE the delivery and recovery story. Be sure to check back here for updates and follow me on Instagram and Pinterest!)
THEN CAME CORONA…. Like MANY of y’all, I found myself riding the (what I call) “Rona Rollercoaster”. At first, I was fine with having a change of pace. But that was short lived. Soon, I was about to pull my hair out being the only one at home with the boys (hubby was an essential worker).
Don’t get me wrong! I LOVE my boys to pieces! My life is just usually so much busier that I had a hard time not doing ANYTHING! (Not good at sitting still!)
SO! I did what I do best and jumped into some projects! Of course, I started a list.
QUARENTINE 2020 TO-DO LIST:
- Fix the floors in the family room (this led to QUITE the project-post on that to come!)
- Reupholstery dining room chairs (I have yet to do this project- I’ll write about it when it’s finished!)
- Repaint the kitchen cabinets (Post on that project coming soon!)
- Organize all the closets as well as the garage.
- Put shelving up in the storage closet.
- Re-Tile master bathroom floor-repaint vanity.
- Refinish coffee table in family room.
- Redo Dining room buffet decor.
A lot of these projects got checked off the list! But the more projects we completed, the more the table became an eye sore for me! IT WAS TIME!
Finally, I threw re-staining the table on the list and I am SO happy we did! Here are the steps we followed!
STEP 1:
SAND…
Since the table had the black gel stain layer, the weird brown stain layer AND the original I knew we would have a LOT of sanding in front of us. First I tried a belt sander, but it wasn’t doing a good job of getting through all the layers very quickly. After a few rounds with the belt sander, I quickly realized we were going to need to go the chemical route.
We ran to the store and picked up a “stripper”. (I know. I know. ALL the jokes were made!) My hubby was kind enough to apply the stripping agent to the table and scrape off the stain layer by layer.
Once the “stripper” had done it’s job, I hand sanded the rest of the table and gave it a good wipe down with a microfiber cloth to get the dust off.
STEP 2:
STAIN…
Matt and I had picked out a really beautiful dark walnut stain that was a stain/finish in one. After testing it on a few pieces of wood, I could tell it was the PERFECT color.
There are several different methods you can use when staining wood. You could use a paint brush, a rag, a sponge, etc. Basically, you want something to rub the stain onto the wood with.
Depending on how porous the wood you’re staining is (and the look you’re going for), a rag does really well rubbing the stain in and helping it soak in the wood nicely.
FOLLOW THE GRAIN
After trying a few different methods, I decided that the paint brush gave the best look I was going for. When using a brush (or any of the perviously mentioned applicators), you MUST go with the grain of the wood.
Otherwise, it will not leave a good finished look and the stain will have a harder time settling into the wood as well.
I have to say- it was a TOTAL pain doing that with our table. You can see in the picture the table has 4 different squares on either side, with wood grain going in all different directions. There is also framing around the squares with a different direction of wood grain.
STEP 3:
APPLY COATS AND LET DRY…
It took some time and some patience, but about 3 coats later (which had to dry and cure for several hours in between), the table turned out SO BEAUTIFUL!!
The color is so rich and the stain shows off the wood grain amazingly! The table feels like a REAL table to me now. (Not just a “sort of grown up” arts and crafts project!)
Because we were working on the table anyways, I decided to give the white legs and the under trim a fresh coat of white paint too. I feel like we bought a whole new table! We LOVE it!
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During Covid quarantine, I also re-finished my coffee table with a similar method. (It was listed above in my “Projects To Do During Covid”) Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Pinterest to see how it turned out!