Refinished harvest table

Hello hello!

It's been wonderfully snowy around here lately (I guess it decided to finally arrive after Christmas), so it has put a wrench in my plan to paint anything outdoors. Which leaves me with an opportunity to post about one of my biggest projects to date (I did this in November of 2010! wow, talk about procrastination)

I managed to find a solid wood harvest table on CL & immediately saw potential (it had a cracked coat of white paint all over it, and it revealed it's turquoise stain underneath).

You can see some of the colour peeking out on the bottom of those legs (aren't the legs purrrty???)

The table's underbelly had a stamp from the 'United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America' I don't know too much about that group, but either way, it had my stamp of approval! 

Here was my canvas. I perched it on an outdoor table so I could strip the paint off without fear of ruining any good furniture.

I gathered my supplies to strip the paint (which was the worst job. ever.)

If you are stripping paint, make sure to be in a well-ventilated area because I'm sure every sniff of that junk docks a year off your life (not really, but it feels like it).

This was my first time using a paint stripper & it took a lot of trial, error & cans of stripper

to actually take the paint off. 

 Needless to say, I didn't use enough of the stuff to get the paint off as quickly as I wanted.

the process was painfully...

slow.

Evvvventually the pain was all gone, and I brought my hand-held sander & went to town.

She was looking better already.

I decided to stain my table with Minwax's Walnut Gel Stain (I wanted it a darker wood and I also wanted to try the Gel Stain to eliminate as much drippage on my kitchen floor).

After one coat (it was looking pretty good!)

Then I did another coat and waited for it to dry. After, I sealed it with a couple of coats of Polyurethane to protect the stain, but also to make it glossy and shiny (this part made me squeal with excitement... the finish was near!!!)

While the table top dried, I started to paint the legs with Behr's ultra white paint.

The finished product:

(you'll notice we took these pictures recently... as in yesterday. There have been changes to our kitchen since then, mainly with the bead board wainscoting that was a new addition this summer & of course my cake stand).

The legs looked great against the dark stain of the table top.

A close-up of the stain

I was pretty satisfied with the final result & we ended up selling it on CL because of the lack of space in our home (in less than 1 day of posting!). Will I ever regret selling it? Possibly. Will I ever strip paint again? Never ever ever. ever.

Well, report card season is here, so I need to start ploughing ahead!!
Hope your weekend exceeds the excitement of mine! ;)