My grandparent's table is a barge. The thing is heavy and large and ornate. The top has this pattern inlay that I've never been crazy about. But when your dad offers the table to you as it has nowhere else to go you of course happily accept it. Then later, when one is redoing one's dining room, one has to do something about how you aren't really in love with it. At first I bought a white table cloth from Christmas Tree Shops and thought well, there you have it. I lightened it up. But after awhile I got permission from my mom that I could in fact paint it and no one would string me up.
I didn't take a good whole table photo before because I honestly had no idea if this would turn out the way it did. So all of these are from my phone as I sent to my mom.
I took to this project like a house on fire.
To paint your table you will need:
Sand paper
Primer
Paint
Poly (water based so it doesn't yellow)
And other various paint supplies, rollers and the like.
At first I thought I would just be painting the top white and leaving the bottom as is. This quickly changed though and that hopefully will explain these images.
First you sand the entire area down. Then wipe that all off with a damp cloth and let dry. Then prime the table. Our primer doesn't take long to dry and before you know it you can sand that layer and wipe the dust off and start getting down to business and paint it.
I used a paintbrush but my strokes were visible so I wish I had used a roller right off the bat. I sanded in between coats and put three on the top. Hindsight though I should have stopped at two coats. Always listen to your mother too. I only did the primer and one coat of paint on the legs because I knew I wanted them to look distressed. Very distressed.
Once the paint is fully dry, then I started distressing. Lots and lots of elbow grease. I wanted it to look chippy and worn, and this was really hard to do after putting three coats on the top. The edges were really easy to distress, so I focused there and on the corners. I also tried to sand "lines" in the table top. I went through many a piece of sandpaper.
Once I was satisfied that it was distressed enough I took to cleaning up the dining room and wiping down the table. The last step was poly. I did a total of three coats on the top only, none on the legs, just because I felt the more worn the better there, but I definitely wanted the top protected a bit more. The poly takes 24 hours to dry in between coats so this was a longer process.
I love the way it turned out! Now my mind is going... what else can I paint and distress?
