Dining Room Table Takes on Farmhouse Look

Good morning friends.  I'm getting myself back in the groove of things again since all of our company is gone.  However, I sure do miss them.  It was so wonderful having so much of our family here recently.  Being in the military, the hardest thing for us is being away from family.  Mr. JUNKtion and I both grew up together in the same little-bitty home town.  In fact, the some of the land that my parent's and his parent's owned was connected.  There was a pond in the middle...half the pond was on our side and half was on there side.  I know such a romantic story, huh?  Growing up across the pond from each other.  :)

But since we grew up together, most all of our family is still there...parent's, grandparent's, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, nieces, nephews, and the whole nine yards.  So, it gets hard to be away from all of that, so getting to bring a bit of it to us was a real treat!  Other things we miss terribly due to being in the military:  good tex-mex food, Braum's ice-cream, and our church: LifeChurch.tv.  There are certainly lots of military benefits, but those are the things that get to us the most.

Okay, moving on to something else I enjoy...refinishing furniture.  Our dining room table and chairs were a hand-me-down from Justin's wonderful Uncle and Aunt (Barry & LaDonna).  They gave us this table before we were even married.  Let's just say they assumed we would get married since we only dated over 8 years...he says he was making sure I was the right one!  At the time they gave it to us, we didn't even have a place for it so we stored it in my parent's attic.  Then, once we got married, we lived in a teen-insy little-bitty apartment with no dining room, let alone room for a large table and chairs.  Finally though, we got to start using it in our house when we were stationed in Utah, about 5 years ago.  It is a super sturdy piece, but I gotta tell you, I wasn't in love with the golden look of it.  I had it on my personal project list for years, but it's hard to work on something for me, when I know I can be working on a piece to sell to create a little extra income for our family.  Needless to say, while the hubby was gone for 6 weeks, I decided to tackle it.  Here's the before and after:

 Here's a better view of the golden-y, chippy (not in a good way), yet very sturdy table top.

 I went to town sanding on this piece and had to start with a 60 grit, slowing working my way to a 220 grit.  The varnish or layers of poly, or whatever was on it was literally caked on so incredibly thick.  The other thing I discovered was that the top was not solid wood, but was a thin wood overlay--yikes!  You have to be incredibly careful with this stuff because you can sand right through it, leaving you with a big spot that doesn't match the rest, with virtually nothing you can do about it.  So, carefully I proceeded.

 Here it is with the top all sanded down.

 Here's the legs that I was in the process of working on.

 Once it was all sanded and cleaned, I stained it with a coat of Minwax Dark Walnut wood stain.  The color turned out perfect.

 After putting the legs back on, I was starting to really like this piece.

 I coated it with about 5 coats of this wipe-on poly.  I had some of this on hand I was trying to use up.  It wouldn't have took that many coats, except for the fact that in my opinion, this doesn't give you nearly the coverage and durability as a regular brushed on polyurethane does.

 Here is a view of the table back in the dining room, along with some thrift store find chairs.

 I really like the updated look of it...slightly farmhouse-y.  This one will be staying as-is until the day that Mr. JUNKtion gets to build me a harvest table.  He builds them, but then we sell them.  We just need to keep one for us! :)

 Here's a closer look at the color and grain of the piece.  Thanks again, Uncle Barry & Aunt LaDonna!

Linking up here: