My dining table…oh my dining table. Well, I might as well tell you the story before I begin with all of the inspiration photos. Way back in May of last year I found this AMAZING Craigslist deal. I was looking for a “shabby chic” dining table with the right curves, chairs, etc. Well, I found this deal for this one that needed some love. It needed a fresh coat of paint. BUT, this set was a huge table, six chairs (two head chairs and four regular), AND a buffet. I didn’t really need the buffet, but all of that was only $150! I mean, talk about amazing. You just don’t find those kinds of deals all the time. So I jumped on it.

The main issue with the table was that it was all wood but the top was wood veneer and some of the veneer had chipped off. If I could go back – oh if I could go back – all I would really need to do is fill the couple spots with wood filler/putty. But no, I had to make it a bigger issue than it was. This is a perfectly good example of THINK before you start working on something. Here is what the table looked like (I’ll show you the chairs later):


So instead of just filling up those couple chips with wood putty, I decided, “how hard could it be to just chip off the rest of it and then put a thin piece of wood veneer back down”. Riiiiight… Needless to say, I ended up with a huge mess. I ended up having to fill it with putty anyways because it was just too hard to get it off. But by that point it was such a huge area, it was impossible to sand it down smooth. So when I finally just gave up and painted it because we NEEDED a table, it was bumpy and I had to just keep a table cloth over it all the time.

It’s one of the best deals I’ve found – but one of the biggest disasters I created for myself. So it finally hit me that I had to do something about it. When I post my finished results later on this week, I’ll explain what I did, but for now, the inspiration. I started searching (like I normally do) for inspiration. What did I want my table to look like? Here are a few examples of what I love:

1. Source: BHG.com – This one is the closest to what I want. I want the top to be dark and the bottom to be white. Kind of like what it was originally – but without the butter yellow color.
2. Source: Rachel Ashwell – I love the chairs in this (but that’s another story). I love the ruggedness and obviously the wood toned top with the lighter bottom. This has blue for the legs though, which isn’t really what I’m going for, but a good inspiration photo nonetheless.
3. Source: mexicodave99 on eBay – I really love this one. It’s a little more distressed than what I’m looking for, but overall it’s a good idea of what I’m going for. Probably I want the top to be a bit darker and more rich though.
4. Source: Coastal Living Magazine – Also a good example, but the top is a little more red than I want. Again, I want something darker and richer (like pic#1). But I do love this example, and again the chairs.
5. Source: The Bella Cottage – A great piece from a great (yet expensive) store. This is about how dark I want the top to be. I love everything about this. But it doesn’t have as much curves as my table does. Overall though, a very close match to what I want.
6. Source: The Bella Cottage – This one is very close to how mine looks already. I had painted the top white and the curves of this one are very close. However, mine was all bumpy and that sucked. But it’s still a good inspiration photo from what it would have been nice to look like when I first painted it.

So there you have it. My icky dining room table story and what I intend to do about it. I just finished staining the top and it looks just awesome. So I’ll be done hopefully by the beginning of next week so I can post the results and step by step instructions. Keep an eye out for it and subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when it’s posted!