BEFORE and AFTER of the Dining Table and Chairs Project

I worked on this dining table and chairs for weeks! Honestly,  I will probably never do spindle chairs again. They are such a pain in the you-know-what to paint! Talk about time-consuming. I made a nice profit when I sold this set, but the hours that went into it, made it about minimum-wage work!

However, when it was all said and done, I was uber-proud of how it turned out. Take a look...

This was the pedestal in process. Sorry, I totally forgot to take BEFORE pics, and had started painting when I remembered! So, the blue up top is the first coat I applied of ASCP in Duck Egg Blue. It was going on so smooth and beautifully. I was loving it before it even dried! So, as you can gather from the picture, the whole base was originally black. All four chairs were black too.

Here's a few pieces waiting to dry...

After I had them all painted and waxed, I tackled the table top refinish part of the project. Here's the materials required to get the job done...

Liquid stripper, mineral spirits (for cleaning), gloves (lesson learned, don't use these thin blue kind, the stripper will eat right through them!), sanding blocks, a scrapper, etc.

I painted on the liquid stripper with a paint brush, waited a few minutes, and started scraping it off. It's a messy task! You can see it easily lifted the previous stain right off. After I had most of it scrapped off, I went to town sanding with a heavy grit block to remove the last of the stain. Once it was all sanded and smooth, I cleaned it up with mineral spirits on a rag.

Here you can see the newly stripped top, next to one of the leaves I still had to work on...

Quite a color difference! The old stain had aged over the years, like they all do. It had an orate appearance. The photo below really shows off the ugly orange!

I applied a Minwax stain that you brush on, and then wipe off...

Here it is right after I brushed it on. I love the dark color, but I chose the kind that you wipe off, to avoid brush stroke marks, and bubbles that are common with brush on stains. I like the wipe off kind for furniture. I waited about 30 minutes for it to penetrate the grain, and then wiped it all off.

After 2 applications, this is the new table top! The grain looks amazing!

To protect the table, I then applied a wipe on polyurethane from MinWax. Again, two applications. The result was an ultra-smooth, beautifully matte table top.

Here's the finished piece...

I hope its new owners will be very happy with it!!