Kitchen Table Makeover

Our poor kitchen table has been through a lot (especially after Ethan's cast last summer) and it really needed some TLC. So I'm going to tell you what NOT to do when taking on an endeavor like this!

At first, I wanted the table to be the same color just painted to hide all the scratches. So I got some brown paint, used a recipe to make it into chalk paint and painted the table. Then I put a wax over it. The wax was horrible to apply and it ended up looking worse than horrible. So instead of doing my research, I just painted over the wax and then applied a few coats of water-based polyurethane over it. This was the end result....

 Not pretty. Not pretty at all. The worse part though was after a few weeks, the polyurethane started peeling up everywhere and was taking the paint off with it. So I decided to do something different. 

I decided that if I was going to have to sand everything off, I might as well mix things up and paint it a cream color. So I bought some Annie Sloan Old White chalk paint and got to work sanding the heck out of the table. There was a TON of wax on it underneath the paint/poly layers and I thought I had pretty much sanded it all off. I was oh so wrong. 

So I got off everything I thought I could and then painted the table. I actually did do some research on applying polyurethane to white, I've heard too many horror stories of turning it yellow, and everything I read said water-based should be fine. So I applied 3 or 4 layers of the stuff. 

Once it dried there were these terrible yellow streaks all over the table.. Ah!! And to make matters worse, the paint was still peeling!!!

I wish I had taken a picture... it was so bad.

So then I got the help of a neighbor and stripped the table. I used CitriStrip (which was great!) and it took two applications to get all the junk off, including that nasty wax. Once we got it down to bare bones, I was going to just repaint it white and start all over but my other neighbor came over and said how much she loved the original color of the table. It is kind of a rustic/barn type look. After looking at it for awhile, I decided I loved it too and saved myself the step of painting it and just applied a few coats of  General Finishes Polyacrylic (SO much better than that other stuff!) and called it good!

The end result... I LOVE it!!

I love it's imperfections. The kids are just going to bang it up anyways so I might as well choose something that is just going to look better when beat up, right?!

 I repainted the chairs using Annie Sloan Paris Blue and then applied the polyacrylic to them. 

 I'm eventually going to recover the chairs with a fun fabric but i'm kinda burnt out on the kitchen table for now... Can you blame me?!

 The pictures don't really do it justice. I love how it turned out. It was just a WHOLE lot of work. Now I , and you, know what not to do when redoing a piece of furniture. You're welcome :)