Whitney's Workshop: The Accidental Table

Last weekend I showed my Facebook Followers a sneak peek of my "accidental" table. Accidental because I had ZERO intentions of building a dining room table right now but when I stumbled upon legs for only $10 each I made a quick table plan in my head. And this is what I pictured!!!

I've done the step by step table post before so I won't bore anyone with that right now. Instead I'll share my finishing details.

I like to finish my tables in two pieces; top and bottom. It makes it so easy to get in all the nooks and crannies and doubly easier when you decide to do a two-tone finish. For my top I started on the underside with a little experiment. I applied Wood Condition to each outside board but not to the center board, hoping to see if there were any big differences.

You can see a slight color change on the conditioned wood vs. non conditioned. If interested in more on this topic read here.

After waiting about 20 minutes I applied the stain. And I really notices no difference. the only thing I did notice was that the stain went on more smoothly on the conditioned boards. Do you notice anything? Doubt it.

So I let the bottom dry over night then flipped her over and applied two coats of stain, sand between coats. I did ultimately decide to use wood conditioner on the top just to make it go on smoothly and for justincase.

I let the top dry overnight and then sanded again with 220 sandpaper and cleaned it really well before I started to apply polyurethane. I then did a total of three coats of poly, sanding with 0000 steel wool between each coat. Look at her shine! This was taken right after the last coat was applied so it is not actually quite this shiny.

Now, onto the bottom. Here's where bleep hit the fan. I applied wood conditioner, justincase, then stained, and I was immediately grossed out by the look of the legs. They were nasty. So sad. I have used similar legs before but used a gel stain so maybe that was the differencce.

Time for a change of plans!!!! Spray paint to the rescue! I love a good two-tone look anyway so my sadness quickly went away.

After all the spraying and drying overnight I distressed. Distressing is a tricky way to get rid of those spots that aren't very pretty and make them look like they were meant to be that way. Another thing to think about when distressing furniture is to think of where the piece would wear naturally over time. For a table like this it would be in the areas where chair legs would hit it and people would rub it while getting up and done from the table.