I bought this sweet vintage dining room table on Craigslist about a year ago. This poor thing has languished in my dining room unfinished forever (sometimes a year is forever.) I finally got around to working on it and somewhere mid-redo, decided I didn’t really want a dining room. I mean we have one, but honestly, its the place I start my seedlings in the spring and a place to park desserts during the holidays. It’s the one place in our house that we really don’t use. It’s a plant/pie room.
So I decided to start working toward making the dining room into my office space. Rob already uses the front formal living room as his home office, and we already have the french doors we are going to eventually hang as barn doors (more projects — yay!) to close off his space from all the general noise of the house, so I figured why not?! Until we get around to completely re-doing our kitchen (which could possibly be another decade) the dining room space is going to be pretty under utilized unless someone claims it. I’m staking my flag, people.
Anyway, back to this table. I figured after my great epiphany, I would just finish the table and put it on Craigslist. I think its actually a cool table. I had planned on keeping it small (without the leaves in) until the holidays when I could put them back in when family comes to visit. And of course for pie.
As you can see, it needed refinished since the leaves were not the same color as the rest of the table top anymore. I used a java gel stain (General Finishes) just to even out and darken the color. Here it is with the first coat. I only ended up doing two coats since I still wanted the wood grain to show through.
After I finished the gel stain, I worked on finishing the bottom. I did the bottom in Annie Sloan Old white (since I had it on hand) and clear wax.
Sorry for the weird photo. I took some quick Iphone photos to upload to Craigslist as soon as I finished. My thinking was I would come back and take some better pictures later. I also tried cropping out the massive amount of junk in the background. (Unfortunately, the dining room has also become a dumping ground for things I’m not sure what to do with yet.)
The top looks a lot lighter in the picture above. It was actually closer to the picture below. Well, this little beauty sold so quick, I didn’t have a chance to take better pictures of it. Yay for the quick sale, but boo for crappy pictures.
As soon as I move all the plants I’ve started out to my garden, I’m hoping to start working on this room. Even if it’s only putting a table in here for me to sit at. I’ve finished up Camille’s “new” desk and plan on moving it into her room and stealing her table as soon as I can.
