All on the Table

Well, in my first post I said that we were planning to refinish a table for use in our dining room.  We finished it in November, but things have been a little hectic.  I started out with a table that my mother gave me.  She had been storing it for over a year in her barn and was thrilled for it to be out of her way.  The table was extremely dusty to begin with (her barn is a working barn) and so I cleaned to before even loading it into my van.  It looked really rough and my plan was to sand of the rough spots where the current finish was peeling and flaking off.

Definitely in rough shape!

I was planning to paint the entire table a creamy off white with just a hint of yellow or pink and paint an oval of flowers and vines in the middle.  Of course my husbands reaction was somewhat adamantly against any paint on the "beautiful wood."  Of course what I was seeing was the black stains in one end of the table and an assortment of dings and blemishes.  So as a good couple should we compromised.  I said that if he could get the black stains sanded out then we could just stain the top, but paint the sides and legs of the table.  As usual,  Murphy has become a resident at my house so I don't have any pictures of this process, because my camera broke at about the same time.  My in laws were coming for Thanksgiving, so we were on a kind of deadline.  If we didn't finish the table we would not have enough room to seat everyone at the table for dinner.  We managed to get it all sanded off.  So to start with I put three coats of paint on the side moulding and the legs.  After the paint was dry, I painted a design on the  wide part of the legs. (not visible in these pics above). 

Yes I based this design on Donna Dewberry's style, but the design itself
is mine.

 
At the same time, I bought a bench on my way to a ladies retreat in Murfreesboro.  I decided to paint it to match.  I painted the same pattern on the flat panel directly under the seat.

This bench originally had a black base but I wanted it to match.

So, after painting the design, I wanted to get several coats of clear poly on to protect all my hard work from my three kids.  Of course by this time it was the middle of November and even in Tennessee it gets cold enough at night that you cannot just paint anytime of day without making adjustments for temperature.  So we put a oil heater in the shed and would turn it on for a couple of hours until the poly was dry.  It did get interesting because we got frost several nights when I was scrambling to get coats onto the table.

No leaves!  They are 18 inches wide each, and we have two.

Altogether I was very pleased with the end result.  We finished the table the week before Thanksgiving and got it set up in the house.  Of course, we cannot leave the table set up with the leaves in the middle, but it was big enough to fit all twelve people around for dinner and we had room for all of the food on the table as well. 

This has both of the leaves set for a full thanksgiving dinner.

The finished product!  Of course now I need to either buy or make some tablecloths that are big enough for the whole table with the leaves.  (We discovered at Thanksgiving that a tablecloth length of 102 barely reaches the ends of the table.)  Then all I have to do is paint all of my orphaned chairs to match, which I plan to wait for warmer weather so I don't have to worry about paint fumes in our small shed.  ;)

So all's well that ends well.