You must understand, that I am NOT a project doer. I'm just not. I envy all of you that are, but I have a REALLY hard time making myself do "projects". So when my cousin, Larissa, showed up and saw the state of my table, she took it upon herself to make me re-do it. (Honestly, it was relieving to have someone MAKE me do it. I've been complaining about it for about 2 years now.)
See how the finish had come off at the bottom of the picture? This is how the table was prior to ANY sanding. I could no longer wash the table with a wet rag, b/c the finish would just ball up and come off onto my rag. It was bad....REALLY bad.
First we tried sanding by hand. That got us NO where.
Then we borrowed my friend Kayce's electric sander. THANK GOODNESS for that! It was still a process, but there is no way we would have gotten it finished with out it. Thanks Kayce!
We sanded,
and sanded,
and sanded some more. The finish was so old and ruined that it would gum up a new piece of sandpaper in about 3 swipes. We went through more sandpaper than you can imagine. And then, we'd have to get out a paint scraper and peel the waxy surface off before we could sand more. This took HOURS. (Word to the wise...USE a wax stripper next time!)
Once we finally got the surface off, we used 3 coats of stain. Unfortunately, on the last coat, I used the brush that had been soaking in water. Oil based stain, used on a wet (with water) brush, makes for sticky, shiny, stain spots that don't dry.
So....
more sanding.
After 3 days of that, it was finally time to put the poly urethane on. Three coats (with more sanding in between) plus one more for good measure and voila...
Looking so pretty and shiny again. Another 4 days of drying,
until FINALLY, last night, we were able to eat on my brand new again table. (And I even wiped it with a wash cloth and all the finish stayed on!)
Thank you Larissa, for all your help and for making me get this done!!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
A Project Adventure
Posted by Elena at 11:14 AM
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15 comments:
That looks great Elena! You guys did great!
Looks FABULOUS!!! That sounds like SUCH a huge project!!! More than i'll EVER attempt!
It looks good. Next time Larissa is staying at our house:)
Couldn't have done it better myself. It looks really good! So what's next? :)
Kayce
Looks Brand New again! Way to "DIY"! Now you are a project doer!
BEAUTIFUL! I woulda hauled it outside and stripped it....
I had a table that looked like that (the finish, I mean). We got a bigger one and gave that one to our friend. He made it look nice again. To keep the new table nice while we still have small children, I invested $13 for vinyl on the roll from WalMart.
wow! what a process! but the finished product looks amazing! good work ladies!
Oh, that's awesome!!! I need instructions. Mine needs refinished, too, sadly.
nice! you've motivated me to take 1/2 hour to recover my nasty stained kitchen chair cushions
Way to go lady!!! See that is a hard one compared to painting the walls. So when are we doing that one.....?
Hey it looks great! Good job! Do you hire out?
Ummmm Can you come to my house now!
You guys did a beautiful job! It reminded me how bad mine looks now!
That looks fabulous. But the work. ugh. I am sooo not a project person either. I think a big part of me would have just stuck placemats on it and ignored it. Or just buy a new one :-)
I am still shaking my head at all the days to accomplish this.
All I can say is, WOW. Looks great--it must be worth the effort!
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