Refinishing a Kitchen Table, Part 2

The kitchen table is finally finished, and moved back into the kitchen tonight! Here are photos from the rest of the process. After stripping off the old varnish and stain, I was down to bare wood. Then I sanded and stained. These two pieces below are the two leaves; the one on the left has the stain already wiped off. On the right, it's still waiting to be taken off.


After two coats of stain, I did two coats of oil-based polyurethane over the top. You can see it below, where the tabletop is shiny! Next, I primed the legs and sides of the table that I was planning on painting black. I used oil-based primer, too, as water-based products can "raise the grain" of the wood. (Shout-out here to YHL, whose furniture painting tutorial provides much of my inspiration for these types of projects!) As they point out, you can totally use a latex paint over an oil-based primer.

I used Behr's paint/primer combination paint for the legs (we've used this stuff a lot on walls, and it's fabulous). The color is actually Black Onyx from Glidden. But The Home Depot will mix up whatever you want for you, so you can switch back and forth with their brands, which is nice. After a couple coats of paint, I put on a coat of water-based polycrylic finish to make the rest shiny... and here's the finished result!

The cats enjoyed checking it out... it was sort of like they totally forgot what a kitchen table was. Guess it was out in the garage for too long! :)

We're glad that we are now going to be able to park in the garage, too--just in time for cooler weather!

Refinishing a Kitchen Table

I have undertaken what's turning out to be a lengthy project, so I've decided to split it into two posts. I'm still not done, but am getting close!

We acquired a table from a coworker of Adam's (we traded her for a lemon meringue pie!). It's a really nice all oak table with two removable leaves, but the varnish was starting to come off in places. We've had it for some time now, and I've finally gotten around to refinishing it. Here's the victim, below (no, not the cat...)


First, I used a paint stripper to remove all of the old finish. In this picture, the stripper is still applied on the left side of the table, and on the right side I'm removing the residue from it after scraping it off. Paint stripper was actually a lot easier to use than I expected--I had thought that using a sander would be easier, but now I know that this was the much better method!

I had thought about using a sander on the table legs, but I had such good luck with the tabletop that I used the stripper there, too. I had good luck with CitriStrip, which is apparently less noxious than other products. (Gloves still required!)

Here it is down to the wood, with all of the finish and stain removed! Now, I'm going to restain the top, do a few coats of polyurethane, and paint the legs and skirt black. More pictures to come as I make some progress after this weekend!