Refinished Kitchen Table With Paint And Stain

Refinished Kitchen Table With Paint And Stain

contributed by Christina at Christina's Adventures 

OK, it has been killing me not to share this with you guys sooner. We just finished tackling our BIGGEST most tedious furniture make-over EVER...our kitchen table!!

Before I begin this massive post, let me tell you the backstory. I bought this table for my husband before he moved into his first apartment. We were engaged, I was going into my senior year in college, and I found this table at a moving sale. I bought it, with a "drysink" for $75. It is very sturdy, solid wood, and very well loved by a family of 8. The bottom was used as a dog chew, there were water marks, kids initials carved in the top, etc. But it is sturdy! I promised I would figure out how to refinish it...

Now fast-forward almost 4 years. This is still what we're eating on...but we just throw a tablebloth over it to forget what's underneath. Are you ready?

Please don't judge me.

After I discovered the wonderful world of DIY blogging, this table has been screaming to be refinished. I have tackled smaller things...but this table is so intimidating!! My husband and I decided to bit the bullet and just DO IT!

First step: Sand down every gosh darn surface. We are young and poor, and don't own our own power tools. Therefore, we borrowed a small sander from my dad. Here's how it went:

This took DAYS of sanding. Seriously. DAYS. My poor husband was regretting his decision to help me after the first 5 hours or so...

Haha doesn't he look soooo happy? ;)

We decided to paint the base of the table, and parts of the benches black. So we sanded those parts down, and primed them

Then, I worked on rolling on black paint onto those flat surfaces while my husband continued to slave over the sander.


Then, disaster struck. THE SANDER DIED! We panicked, tried to fix it, but it just pooped out. We called my dad, who reassured us that is was OK, he couldn't remember the last time he used it, and it was very old anyways.

Ok, phew. But...we were only done with sanding the benches...and we still had the tabletop to finish! What were we going to DO?!

Craigslist to the rescue! A guy 20 minutes away was selling a belt sander, with extra belts, for $25! Seriously...GOD! Thank you! Within the hour, my husband was at it again, and we didn't have to spend a fortune.

Woah ... the belt sander was way more powerful. We would have totally done the whole thing with this if we would have realized it would have taken just half the time! Before we knew it, the tabletop was ready for stain

Haha I just realized my husband is showing some major leg in that picture...whoops!

I know everyone's "going light" these days...but so many things in our house are dark walnut stained. So, we went with a dark walnut stain for the tabletop!

OK, we're getting somewhere now! Once we liked the way that the stain looked, we let it set, and then put 4 coats of poly on the stained surfaces, and 2 coats on the painted surfaces.
Finally, after we let it dry...it was FINISHED!

I know the shape is still farmhouse country, but I LOVE how the colors really match our house now. It is soooo much nicer to sit at, and we now love eating at our table :)

We are thrilled with our new table :) Let me know what you think!

Cost for re-do:

Sander: $25

Stain: $7.47

Paint: $6.46

Polyeurathane: $5.87

Total cost: $44.80

So perfect! We totally could not afford to buy a new table anytime soon, so even though we had to put a lot of work into this, it was totally worth the $45!

 I love the new dark stained look with the black legs! This is what we did with our family table, see it here!