Table Rescue 101

I was driving to pick Hubs up from work a few weeks ago

(we only have 1 car at the moment)

and I saw a little table in a pile of stuff in front of a house. I’d thought about stopping, but I was driving and had something like 2.3 seconds to make up my mind. I don’t know about you, but 2.3 seconds is not enough time for that kind of decision. I let it pass, but thought about that cute little table all the way in to the office.

Once Hubs was in the car and we were on our way home, I made an executive decision. If the table was still there, it must be meant to be and, wouldn’t ya know it (Squee!), there it was…just waiting for moi! This time I stopped and as it turned out, the lady of the house was putting out some more things. I asked if I could have the table and she agreed. Her husband was nearby and encouraged me to take it all…don’t most husbands? Hubs rarely sees my vision of things and I could tell that he was wondering about this one.

In his defense, he had reason to be skeptical. I’m currently hip-deep in projects. Since we’ve moved back to Ohio from the West, it seems my coping mechanism has been a plethora of creativity coupled with a dearth of energy. I’ve started (and ~~stopped~~ postponed) many a project since being here, but haven’t completed as many as I’d like. Hubs skepticism had a lot of merit, but the price was right, it fit into our trunk, so he didn’t complain too much.

I failed to take a before photo because I was so excited to get started. The whole table was a mahogany-ish. The top had water rings and black stains from the water. The lady had started to paint the legs beige–I will NEVER understand the desire to paint ANYTHING beige––but she, too, had many other projects pulling her away from my little table.

I sanded down the top, and got a little carried away with the sander before I realized this wasn’t solid mahogany, but was in fact a veneer…very thin veneer. Oops. Here’s the table with the base painted black, with ORB (Oil-Rubbed Bronze) over top. I LOVE this color.

You can see the edges of the table are probably pine and are much lighter than the veneer. Here’s a close up of the edges. See how much lighter they are? I’ve made the mistake of staining woods that are two different colors and I know that using the same stain on different colored woods will still give you two different shades.

To the rescue…some handy-dandy craft paint. I mixed up some chocolate brown and burnt sienna and then watered it down. You can see the two are much closer in color now and are ready to be stained.

I put on the mahogany stain, and then sprayed poly over the whole thing. Actually, I had a mishap with a can of sealer that was bad and put a white film over everything, which actually required ANOTHER coat of ORB and some light sanding and re-staining.

Who knew one little table could be such a hassle? Perhaps this is why some of my projects come to a stand still. Hmmmm.

Here it is with the stain (before the bad sealer incident).