Thursday, July 16, 2009

A Project Adventure

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!!

15 comments:

Jewelle said...

That looks great Elena! You guys did great!

Deanna said...

Looks FABULOUS!!! That sounds like SUCH a huge project!!! More than i'll EVER attempt!

Deidra Smith said...

It looks good. Next time Larissa is staying at our house:)

Anonymous said...

Couldn't have done it better myself. It looks really good! So what's next? :)
Kayce

Mama Williams said...

Looks Brand New again! Way to "DIY"! Now you are a project doer!

Gina said...

BEAUTIFUL! I woulda hauled it outside and stripped it....

Gina said...

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.

Tamie said...

wow! what a process! but the finished product looks amazing! good work ladies!

Trish said...

Oh, that's awesome!!! I need instructions. Mine needs refinished, too, sadly.

Nichole said...

nice! you've motivated me to take 1/2 hour to recover my nasty stained kitchen chair cushions

"The Queen in Residence" said...

Way to go lady!!! See that is a hard one compared to painting the walls. So when are we doing that one.....?

Tonya said...

Hey it looks great! Good job! Do you hire out?

CB said...

Ummmm Can you come to my house now!

You guys did a beautiful job! It reminded me how bad mine looks now!

Keys to the Magic Travel said...

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.

LouandAngela said...

All I can say is, WOW. Looks great--it must be worth the effort!