B&A TV Stand

We have had this tv stand for probably about 4 years now. We found it in Tyler's parents garage and decided to keep it since it is solid wood. I have always wanted to refinish it but never got around to it. Wow, looking back at it I can't believe I waited so long. It looked pretty terrible. I forgot to take a true before picture so this is after I had already sanded part of one door. (By hand, whew.)

Nicks, nicks, everywhere. This thing has seen better days. 

I stained the front of both doors and used the same stain I used on the chairs, Sunbleached. It was so much work to sand the doors down to the bare wood that I decided to just match the stain to a paint and paint the rest. I am glad I did because I think it actually looks better, like a little two toned. I used Valspar Montepiler Ashlar Gray.

I wanted to add some color so I painted the inside a yellow called Bugle Call. Then I covered one shelf with wrapping paper. 

I love these knobs. I got them at Hobby Lobby for 50% off. They totally change the look.  This picture does not do them justice, unfortunately.

I was able to sand out a lot of the nicks and scratches with an electric sander. I also distressed the doors a little bit to add dimension because they looked a little flat. We finished it all off with polyurethane (because this piece gets a lot of use) and WALLAH! It looks SO MUCH BETTER! Like I said, I can't believe I waited so long to do this project. I am glad it is over though. This is one heavy chunk of wood.

Kitchen Table Re-Do

The chairs that we got from my grandma have 28" arm rests. Most tables are only about 26" from the bottom. So after selling our old table and chairs to a cute newly wed couple, we were table-less for about 2 months while I scoured ksl for a table without a lip. I finally found this ol' beauty but it was disguised by a pretty terrible picture online. It was close so I decided to go check it out and it turned out to be perfect! (Besides needing to be refinished, but I can handle that :) They were asking $125 for the table and 4 chairs but my budget was only $75 since that is what I sold our table and chairs for. I asked how much they would sell just the table for (since I already had chairs) and to my surprise they said $50! I did not even have to talk them down. Perfect.

Terrible. The polyurethane coating was so thick and bubbly. This was after we took the two leaves off the sides. 

 Tyler has quite a lot of sanding experience from working for his dad so he helped me out. It took all day to sand through the poly coat.

 Almost done!

After sanding it all down to the bare wood, I stained it using Minwax Stain in Natural. We love the butcher block top and wanted the wood to stay natural-looking so I only did one thin coat. Then we did two very thin coats of Minwax Semi-Gloss Polyurethane and let it dry for 24 hours.

While the poly was drying, I started painting the legs. We used Valspar Fairmont Suite Clay Red and I love love love it. It was a color sample I just kept randomly pulling out while perusing the paint section at Lowes so I knew I must use it. I used a primer but I still had to do 4 coats to get it the shade I wanted it to be.

Once we put it all together with the chairs I was not satisfied with how it came together. The chairs looked too random. So I decided to incorporate the red into the chairs by using the "dipping"method and then one random prong on the back.

The official after shot with the leaves back on and set up in our kitchen. It fits perfectly in our space.

Since our Addi gets to sit up to the table like a big boy, I keep the spare chair over to the side with a pillow and a throw. It comes in handy when we have friends over.