A few months back, I shared how I refreshed my kitchen chairs with a little bit of elbow grease and my favorite paint sprayer, and lets just say it snowballed into a ‘if you give a mouse a cookie’ kind of situation. See, once I painted the chairs black, the table looked off. When there were multiple chair colors next to the dark stained table with yellow legs, it kind of gave off an eclectic vibe, but once the chairs were united in black, the table fell a little flat.
So, I did what any person does these days and I posted a photo of my newly painted chairs and old table on instagram and solicited advice for what color I should paint the table legs to go better with my new chair color. Most people said to go with a white or other neutral. Then, one of my internet friends left this comment:
“I actually love the yellow – but its hard to mix with black and not get bumblebee vibes.”
And she is 100% right. Then, every time after this moment that I looked at my newly refreshed kitchen chairs and my old table, all I could see was the bumblebee aesthetic. It had to go.
Andrew and I made our dining table back in 2013 for what I’m guessing was less than $100 so I considered using the table as firewood but in the spirit of saving money, I reconsidered. The table fits our space well (thats why we built it in the first place) so I was determined to find a finish that I liked.
I’ve started to gravitate towards more light wood tones lately and I love how they pair with black, so my dream was to remove all of the paint and stain to uncover the wood’s natural beauty. Then Andrew, my husband, vetoed the idea. Too much work he said. But I’m not one to back down from a challenge, so, I kept pondering it in the back of my mind. Do you see where this is going?
Fast forward a month, the kids and I were decorating sugar cookies for Christmas and I used an old plastic table cloth from a previous Pinterest party. When I went to clean up the table and remove the table cloth, I realized the table cloth had transferred alcohol ink onto my table and it was not coming off. This was the catalyst of the table update.
To aid in my argument for the kitchen table refresh, it had seen a lot of wear and tear in the last 7 years – the legs were dinged and black paint had worn off from the Krylon we used the first time we painted our kids’ chairs. Not to mention the little grooves between each board that attract crumbs – clearly we were novice table builders back in the day.
So, one weekend when the weather was nice last month, I set up a folding table in the kitchen, broke out the orbital sander and went to work. (And please excuse the mess that is our back patio – clearly our children run this place.)
The Process
Since we were the original constructors of this table, it was easy enough to deconstruct for this process. We separated the top from the base, then Andrew removed all of the pocket-hole screws from the table top to disconnect the individual pieces. This allowed us to do two things:
- Andrew was able to use our planer to plane each individual board (our small planer can only plane boards up to ~10 inches wide), which reduced the majority of the sanding of the table top.
- With the table top boards separated, Andrew ran them through the table saw to trim their width by about 1/8 of an inch. This cut off the rounded edge that had formed the ‘crumb catcher’ grooves.
Then the real work started. Since the table top is one flat surface, its easy enough to sand, but the table legs – those are a different story. I was able to use the orbital sander to sand the larger/flat areas of the table base, but as you can see from the photo below, that only got me so far. If the update to my kitchen chairs took a little bit of elbow grease, the kitchen table took A LOT of elbow grease 🙂
After this, there was only one option left – to sand the rest by hand. Here’s where I’m going to lose a lot of people. “Sand by hand?! Your husband was right – too much work!” I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a point where I thought I had gotten in over my head, but I’m not going to admit that to Andrew. If 2020 has taught me anything, its that I have nothing but time on my hands because we have no where to go. What else am I going to do with my weekend?
So, it took me just about the remainder of that weekend to sand every crevice of those turned legs. I just did a little at a time, convinced Andrew to help me (at that point, we were so far in, the fastest way out was through, you know what I mean?) and eventually, we turned a corner.
Once the sanding was done (hallelujah!), Andrew reattached the table top and we prepped everything for polyurethane (I wiped everything down with a wet microfiber cloth, then used these tack cloths). The table top is made from poplar (not a great staining wood) and the table legs are pine, but the wood tones were close enough that I didn’t feel the need to add any stain. The top of the table was previously stained with Minwax Dark Walnut and I knew I wanted a change, so I opted to skip stain altogether and seal it with Minwax Polyurethane in Semi-Gloss.
I used a foam brush to apply three coats of polyurethane. I allowed each coat to dry about 24 hours, then lightly sanded with 220 grit sand paper between coats. After sanding, I wiped everything down again with a microfiber cloth, then a tack cloth to make sure the surfaces were clear of dust before applying the next coat of polyurethane. After the third coat, I allowed the table to dry about 48 hours before use. Yes, we had a folding table in our kitchen for a week! But, for this project costing me $0, I can’t really complain.
When the table was fully cured, we reattached the table top to the base and were finally able to put the folding table away!
The updated table is a welcome improvement from the original.
How about a few before and afters?
And one more for you:
This project was one of my 2021 goals, so I am pleased to announce I finished it in the first month of the year. I wanted to play off the light wood tones we have on our large cutting board and hyacinth bar stools in the kitchen as well as our wooden arm rest covers in our adjacent living room, and this little makeover did just the trick.
Do you have any furniture items you want to update? Or maybe you already have? I’d love to hear about them. Comment below or connect with me on instagram @elleandjaydesign. You can also now connect with me on Pinterest too!
