This Is: A Goodwill Special

This is a table.

This is do-it-yourself burnished pewter chalk paint.

This is wood finishing supplies.

This is a pair of sanders.

This is one of six dining room table chairs.

This is fabric.

This is our "new" dining room table and chairs.

So Gracie and I were strolling through Goodwill a few weeks back when we came across this table. At first glance, it appeared a little rough. There was paint on it, some of the finish was wearing off the top and one of the leaves wasn't locking into place.

You might be asking, so why did you buy this hunk of junk? First, because these are the leaves. You don't insert them in the middle. You tuck them underneath the ends, which means no leaves in my closet. Second, because it's solid wood. No veneer means it would be easy to refinish. Third, the bracket thing was fixable (mostly). And four, it was only $25. So how could I not buy it?

So I got out my sander. See, still perfectly beautiful wood underneath all that wear and tear.

After a few times over with increasingly finer sandpaper, it was ready for refinishing.

I popped the top off to get it out of the way so I could sand the leaves. You can see here how they tuck underneath things.

And then they came off, too, so I could rough up the legs. I didn't hit them as hard as the tops, because ...

... my helper wanted to paint them. So it wasn't like I was trying to get a uniform stain on the whole table.

She wanted to try the chalk paint thing, but that stuff is stupid expensive. As luck would have it, the Home Depot guy told her how she could make her own chalk paint for a fraction of the cost.

And it actually turned out really well. The paint definitely had a chalky finish to it. I'm not sure if it would have stuck to an un-sanded surface like they claim chalk paint does, but who cares because I sanded the legs anyway.

As you might remember, we bought a table and six chairs last summer. We tried refinishing the table, but the top didn't turn out quite like we had hoped. But the chairs were really sturdy. So Gretchen and I popped off the seats and sanded them down.

I let her do all the painting since she knew the secret formula.

A little bit of polyurethane, a few staples out, a few staples in, and we had our new chairs.

I think they look a lot better than the old chairs.

Anyway, back to the star of this post: the table. While Gretchen was working on the legs, and later the chairs, I was putting stain and lacquer on the top and leaves. The color actually turned out pretty similar to the color of our floors, which was somewhat fortuitous. I like to think I planned it that way.

When I was done, we flipped it over and replaced the felt strips on the bottom side. The leaves had been scrapping pretty badly previously (they aren't now) because the table top need a little leveling. A couple of shims and that problem was solved, but I figured replacing the felt couldn't hurt.

I put the top and leaves back on, and I think the table turned out pretty well. Having the top off enabled me to soap everything down really well, so the leaves glide in nice and easy. In case you were wondering, we didn't stick with the chalky finish on the legs. We put a couple of coats of polyurethane on them to help protect them. We have kids after all.