The Table. And My Stripping Skillz.

The table. It nearly killed us, but now it's our lovable kitchen table.

Our precious.

It started out as this:

*creepy jaws music*

It was very brown, heavy, and practically screamed in 70s pain. It's legs were placed backwards, so it looked a bit like Tommy Pickle's pigeon toes. But it was $25 at the local restore, so we said yes. 

Close up of the lovely poop finish and the leg detail. 

We loved the sturdiness of it and the carved detailing. Unfortunately we were furniture novices and thought it would be an easy redo. Uh, no.

We originally planned on sanding it and oiling the entire table. 

But then it took us 3 months just to get to this point. 

Sanding revealed a lovely oak grain pattern that was completely hidden by the poop varnish though. Yay!!

So then we had the brilliant idea of trying to use stripper since we weren't getting anywhere. Luckily we only applied it to the legs. Lets just say it moved the remaining stain around so that the legs were an all over light poop color. ALL that sanding gone to waste. Crap. Obviously we have poor stripping skills. ;)

So... we painted the base. Someday I might go back and properly strip it. But I really love the tonal difference for now.

The paint is Honeymilk by Valspar. It's a truly luscious cream color that turns the color of milk in the sunlight. We plan on painting our kitchen cabinets that as well we love it so much. 

Lastly, we oiled the top in natural colored Danish Oil. 

... which made it turn fluorescent orange (the picture doesn't really show this well, sorry!). Oops, we obviously had ourselves a red oak table. Go vols! To fix it we rubbed on a light coat of "medium walnut" colored danish oil. This calmed it down to the beauty that it is today:

Mmm

See the grain? How could someone cover that up??

And yes, we kept the brass kick plates. They're just too cool.

So, one last before and after of the table that took us 4 months to complete:

Yuck Before.

Lovely After.

In the new house it will probably turn into our dining room table since the kitchen is too tight :( 

We're very proud of this table. And the danish oil is an excellent kitchen table surface: prettier than poly and easier than wax. We just use Murphy's oil soap to clean it and the oil stops water from penetrating. 

I'm still working on the Danish oil tutorial too! It's our preferred wood treatment rather than staining. 

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