Furnishing: Our New Table

So, I think I can honestly say this post chronicles our biggest house project thus far... except perhaps the Christmas decorating.

God graciously allowed Curt and I to find an apartment with a low rental rate, fully furnished. Ever since we have been gradually accruing furniture to fit our own tastes. One item I kept my eyes open for was a dining room table.

The table that came with the apartment... and our first Sunday dinner.

I watched Craigslist, University Yardsale, and kind of kept my eyes open while passing yard sales. Then, I joined Freecycle. Freecycle is a yahoo group where people list  their trash, and other people list items they are looking for like canning jars, leftover paint, etc.

I had been watching the emails Freecycle sent out, and happened to be on just as someone listed a round wooden table.
I emailed back right away- and wonder of wonders! I was the first person to email! The lady gave me her address, and we set up a date for us to pick up the table!

We drove about 45 minutes to pick up the table... did I mention it was free? The lady was just getting rid of it? So, we paid gas money... but a free wooden table!
After looking over the table we could see that it needed to be refinished. There were some places where it was pretty badly warped by water damage, but it was so beautiful!

Here are  a picture from stripping the finish...

We used this less toxic finish stripper that smelled slightly orangy. You applied, then waited about ten minutes, and then went to town with a little scraper tool. Let me just say it was a mess! The scraping took far longer than I expected and was a lot harder than I expected.

Curt borrowed an electric sander from his dad, and we bought graduated levels of sandpaper to make the wood smooth. Several of the warped places were so warped that we ended up going down into the particle board... but it turned out that the spots were small enough that they just looked like knot hole once we finished them.

Fairly close to the beginning... and it's not looking so good.

My bad spray paint job. Curt came and rescued me from the dripping paint.

one of the clawfoot legs freshly painted

The base after several layers of spray paint.

The base of the table had clawfeet. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with those. We spray painted the base a cream color. It looked better than I had imagined!

Red Mahogany Stain

Next I researched staining and varnishing for the table top. I decided on a Red Mahogany. When I first applied it I thought it would be a bit too dark!  Then I realized you wipe the stain off after a few minutes. Here's what that ended up looking like...

Much better colorwise

Don't the colors go well together?

Finally, we decided on a polyurethane finish. Polyurethane withstands water better than the other finish types. Since this is an often used kitchen/dining area table, withstanding water was exactly what we were looking for.
We did one coat of varnish a day for 3 days.

Careful, careful sealing

After one coat

Now the 2nd coat is dry!

 Finally, we took the table home and reassembled!

Curt hard at work

The first leg attached!

EEEeee! It's all together! Doesn't it look beautiful?

Lovely!

A better look at the base

 And here is the finished product complete with our first meal!

 All done!