I know, I know. It has been a while since I have posted and all of you have been staring at your screens just waiting to hear from me.

Or something like that.

Well, things have been interesting (?) around here this week. This weekend everyone kind of came down with a sinus infection/cold. Rory was NOT SLEEPING. Like revert back to the old days when she would be up ALL NIGHT LONG.

Then antibiotics happened and everything was becoming so much better and BAM! antibiotics caused *ahem* poop issues.

So I’ve been up to my eyeballs in dirty diapers and diaper rashes and AY YI YI – is this my life?! Do I really blog about poop like every time now?!

Pretty much.

Thank the good Lord above that all seems to be settling down in that area.

Let us move on.

I will now switch over and try and pretend to be a “real blogger”.

Last week I worked my stinkin’ butt off to get my childhood dining room table done in time for a dinner party of sorts we were having on Sunday night. I posted a quick before/after picture and had SO MANY people tell me they wanted a detailed post about how to do their own tables. So, today I will do just that!

When I say worked my butt off, I mean that LITERALLY. I was so sore from all the squatting going on that I could barely even sit on the toilet, much less get up from it.

Re-doing furniture = lots of squats = workout!

My butt is perkier this week, for sure.

This was a tricky project for me, I will be honest. Not as far as the work goes, but mentally.

As I said before, this was the dining room table I grew up eating almost every meal on. Memories flooded my mind and heart as I worked on this project.

Dinners as a family- my two older sisters and I sitting with our parents on any given night and holding hands (whether we wanted to or not) and bowing our heads to pray over our meal… taking our first bite and reciting the same thing every single night, “Mom, you make the bestest food!” and my mom (acting shocked every single night) saying, “Well, you just made my day!” in her most endearing southern drawl… the occasional fight between sisters (meaning the older ones, never me- HA!), but mainly an abundance of laughter because anyone who knows the McIntire clan knows that laughter is ALWAYS in abundance… tears from hard days at school and work… chocolate gravy and biscuits on many, many, many Christmas mornings… I could go on for days at the amazing memories I have surrounding this table.

So when I started this project I was nervous. I wanted to get it right, do it perfectly.

The table started out looking like this:

I searched on Pinterest to try and find inspiration for what I wanted to do with this table. This is the table that I kept reverting back to as my inspiration.

(source: The Cozy Cape)

The table is older, so it was worn down quite a bit. I started out sanding the top part down to strip it as much as possible. I sanded for about an hour. Thankfully it was already stripped so much from years of use!

The stain I used was MinWax Woodfinish in Dark Walnut. I wanted something darker but not black, but Dark Walnut was as dark without being Ebony they had at my Lowe’s. So, that meant just putting on extra coats to get the color I wanted.

I used two staining sponges they have at the store right near the cans of stain and used that to stain the table top. The key to staining is to do long, even strokes with the grain of the wood. I let the stain sit 10-15 minutes after applying it, and then wiped it off with a clean lint free cloth. This was by far the most tedious part of the project, but oh so worth it! I did about six-eight coats of stain because I knew I wanted it really dark.

The staining definitely took me two-three days to get perfect. After it was completely dry we put on three light coats of polyacrylic. I used this instead of polyurethane because it doesn’t smell as strong and it isn’t as tacky and it also dries faster.

Between coats of stain, I worked on the chairs and the bottom/stand of the table. This part was so much easier than I expected it to be.

I got a primer and paint in one and used that so I didn’t have to sand this part of the table. I applied two coats of paint on the bottom of the table and the chairs (note: Andy helped me with the chairs!). The coats were NOT perfect. I didn’t want them or need them to be. Here is the bottom of the table after the first light coat of paint:

Now- to antique it! After you get the desired coverage on your piece and the paint dries, just take some sandpaper and rub the edges that would be naturally worn down over time. Again, none of this is an exact science. You can make it however “worn” you want!

After I sanded down the edges, I took the same stain I used on the top of the table and put some on a clean, lint free cloth (I used one of Andy’s old undershirts). I just took the cloth that had stain on it and rubbed it along the sanded down edges and then wiped it off immediately with a clean cloth. I did this over and over until I got the desired look. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of this part with my “real” camera and just did it with my phone so the picture isn’t great.

I did this same process with the chairs after they were painted and dry. Once the stain was completely dry on top, we reassembled the table and painted the bottom lip of the table white and distressed/antiqued it too.

Then the table was done!

I am absolutely IN LOVE with how the table turned out. I am so excited for all the many, many more memories to be made here on this table with my own family. And I’m so thankful I get to make those on a table that some of my favorite memories of how I grew up were made on.