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We had been watching Flea Market Flip constantly and were both itching to find a project. I had been looking for a dining room table since we moved to Memphis. I am a huge fan of Jo and Chip Gaines from “Fixer Upper”, so I wanted a farmhouse table and bad! We went in that morning hoping to find a table, we had gone by several times and hadn’t found one that matched what I wanted. Well I walked into our favorite Thrift Store, went straight to the back and laid my eyes on this beauty with dark wood stain. What made it even better was the fact that is was $75!!!! The table could be extended as well. Like it was huge. We got it home and started working.
It Starts:
We worked on sanding this table, and by we I mean my husband, it seemed like months. He would go out occasionally on weekends or certain weekdays and sand a little here and there. He even took the legs of the table to summer camp for work with him. Needless to say, he didn’t finish. This table is beautiful and has details out of this world. The legs have very defined creases that made it difficult to sand if it wasn’t done by hand. We used plenty of sanders for each portion of this project. The top of the table was sanded using an electric sander, but everything else pretty much had to be done by hand using sand paper.
The Real Work Begins:
A year later and we purchased our first house and the dining room table was still not finished. We had our first event in the house with our fold up table in the dining room and I was so upset. I love to entertain, and anything less that perfect is not up to my expectations. The job was more than we expected it to be. There were a lot of grooves that I talked about earlier, that we didn’t think about when we began the sanding on this beautiful piece.
I wanted to paint the entire table, but my dad thought we shouldn’t paint over the beautiful wood. He was completely against it to say the least. I gave in a little, because of the time we spent on sanding the table. As I sit at the dining room table and type this, I have to admit it, he was absolutely correct. I painted the legs of the table white because I did want a contrast in the dining table to make more of a statement. After several coats of white paint from Sherwin Williams (I can’t think of the actual name of the paint) I had it where I wanted it. I painted the hardware in my favorite spray paint color, Rust-Oleum Oil Rubbed Bronze. The table top was sanded and stained to preserve the look, like my dad suggested. We used Miniwax Wood Finish, Fruitwood to stain the table. The outer edges of the table were made with a darker wood, so the color is richer there than the inside.
The Finished Product:
When we placed it in the dining room, it’s like the room finally came to life. I only inserted one leaf into the the table due to the hutch that also in the dining room and we wanted to make sure people could get in and out. I apparently don’t take enough pictures of my dining room, especially my table. This is after I searched and searched for the right chairs to go with the table for the look I wanted to create. And then for Thanksgiving. I love Christmas so yes my tree (and the other trees in the house) were already up before Thanksgiving.
