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W

e were lucky when we moved into our house, because it has a big dining room, and we already had a big dining room table. I know most people who move from an apartment into a house have a smaller, eat-in kitchen style table, and dining room tables are generally expensive, because they are big and fancy. But Jim's dad found a table on the side of the road that was in great condition except that the leg was broken. So he fixed it, and Jim's mom recovered the chairs, and they gave it to us. So that fills up the dining room very nicely. Total cost to us: $0.

In our apartment, that table sat in the kitchen, and we never used it (except as a place to dump all of our crap). Now it's in the dining room, and while it does tend to accumulate crap, I try to clear it off every other day or so. However, we also have an eat-in kitchen, and no table for that. At least not until a few weeks ago.

A nearby neighborhood was having a 'hood-wide garage sale, so Jim and I went, looking for a table and chairs. We found one at one of the first houses that was in pretty good shape, and the right size. It had a few scratches and dings, but it was a garage sale, so what do you expect? I offered the guy $25 and he took it, and we were the proud owners of a new table. No chairs, but chairs can be pretty cheap.

I decided that I was going to refinish it. Besides the aforementioned dings and scratches, it was a pretty dark stain, almost a cherry. I wanted something lighter. Had I known then what I know now, I would have patched up the scratches and dings the best I could and lived with it.

I started off by buying some stripper -- the kind you spray on and scrape off. Keep in mind that I had never done anything like this before in my life. Okay, that's not entirely true. When I was like 12, I decided to strip the paint off my bike (which I had, for some unknown reason, spray-painted black and red, and now wanted returned to its original pink and white colors). But I'd never worked with wood products before. I figured (and this phrase will strike fear into DIY-ers everywhere), "How hard can it be?" I was about to find out.

First mistake: I didn't read the instructions that thoroughly (much beyond "Spray on. Scrape off.") So I sprayed everything all at once. The table top. The leaf. The legs. Then you're supposed to wait at least fifteen minutes. I was working outside, on a nice sunny day, so I hung out and read a magazine while I waited. Then I decided to start scraping. The stripper took the finish off fairly easily, but for some reason, I thought one application would take everything off down to bare wood. Apparently, I thought it was holy water, and not chemical stripper.

So I scraped and scraped and scraped some more. And while I was working on one part, everything else dried in the sun. So now I had not just the finish and stain to contend with, but also the dried stripper. (Heh. Stripper.) I got really frustrated and just closed up shop for the day. Plus, the table legs are fairly ornately carved, and I wasn't having much luck with the scraping. So I gave up for a while.

At some future point, I gave it another go. This time, I only sprayed a small section at a time. I finally got to the point where I had removed the finish and some of the stain from the majority of the table top and leaves. I ignored the legs for a while, because I had no clue what to do there. Some books I consulted suggested using a special steel-wool type string, but that just seemed way too time-consuming. Anyway, after removing as much stain as I could with the stripper, I started scrubbing the table with steel wool and water, as per the directions. This removed the rest of the stain and pretty soon I was down to bare wood, for the most part. It sound so easy when I type it out, but this took place over about four or five days of working six hours or so.

Then I moved on to the panels below the table. I had to prop the table up on end to reach these. Bad idea. While stripping those panels, the stripper-plus-finish-plus stain goop dripped all over my nice clean table top. And no amount of re-application of stripper/washing with steel wool/sanding/crying would get those drips off.

And still, I had no clue what to do with the table legs.

So after like a month and a half of working on this table, I just decided to paint it. I went to Home Depot last week and bought primer and paint (Cottage White) and painted it this weekend. Yesterday, I put on the final coat. Today, I reassembled the table, and now it is standing in my kitchen.

I realize now that with all of the money I spent on the stripper/steel wool/scraper/paint/brushes/rags, I could have just bought a nice table in the first place. I estimate my total cost for this table to be about $120. But that's not really accurate -- I can use everything but the stripper again. I have lots of paint left over, and it's the color I want to paint the trim in most of the other rooms in the house. So all is not lost.

Now I just have to get some damn chairs. Right now I have folding chairs sitting there, and it looks a little goofy.

Here is the table as it appeared the day that we bought it. You can click on any of these pictures to see them full-size. Please ignore my ugly kitchen floor and cheesy wallpaper. One step at a time. You can't really see all of the damage to the table in this picture, but trust me.

Here is the freshly-painted table. Roxanne wanted to get in the picture, and there wasn't much I could do to stop her, so she's the dark spot in the lower left corner. Please ignore any imperfections in the paint job. I did the best I could. It's good enough for me.

Thought I would throw in some bonus pictures. This is a wicker chair that Jim's mom picked up for $20 at an estate sale. I'm not a big fan of the wicker, but I think this is pretty nice. Roxanne likes to sleep here. And claw the chair. I'm trying to get her to stop that last part. But it filled up an otherwise empty corner of the kitchen.

This is a flower. Duh. I bought a hanging plant yesterday for the hook by our front door. I realized after I hung this one up that it looked kind of dumb and I should have picked something a bit more trailing. Oh well. Live and learn. I also realized after I took this picture that I should have deadheaded the dried-up bloom on the right before taking the picture. Oops.

This is Roxanne, lying in her Cat Napper, thoughfully purchased for all of our cats as a house-warming gift by Tara. I liked this picture best because it looks like she's winking at you, which would be a very Roxanne thing to do.