Side Table ReFind

My husbands co-worker, Sharon, wanted to breathe new life into an old side table. Unfortunately, I didn't take an official "before" photo with the table still assembled. So, you'll just have to use your imagination :)

Here are all the pieces "pre" a little reFinding.

This project proved a little tricky, as there were some unforeseen obstacles. The fist being the overlay on the table top. You can see in the picture above that the table top has two different surfaces. I ended up sanding off the entire top overlay, to discover (thankfully) some really nice, clean wood underneath. Yeah! There was a ton of sanding going on, my hands are still shaking a little as I type this post, and I have the sweet smell of sawdust in my nose ;)

Once the table top and lower ledge were sanded, I was ready to tackle the legs.  

The legs proved tricky. Check out all those curves, nooks and crannies. 

Despite my best effort of hand sanding, I was left with this.

Close....but not enough. I had to resort to chemicals. 

Meg and I tag-teamed this portion using some good ole stripper. 

It worked perfect!

Once I had everything sanded down it was time to stain and coat with some poly. 

Let's see that before again...just for good measure.

And here is the after!

Ok. A teaser photo with Max first.

You know I couldn't resist having him in a photo.

Doesn't the stain look nice?!

Back at It!

So today is gross (Cloudy and 45). Yesterday was gross-er. It rained all day long, literally. BUT.....Monday....Monday was glorious. It was a short-lived glance at how wonderful Spring will be this year (fingers crossed).

So, with the weather as lovely as it was on Monday, I decided to get back at it! I am refinishing a coffee table for my good friend Michele.

Here are some before pictures:

From the front

From the top

Max was helping :)

From the Side-ish. Sorry it's so dark!

And here is an "in-progress" shot!

Max is still helping :)

I was only able to get the top sanded down before I had to call it a night. I am hoping that this weekend, there might be an opportunity to finish up the sanding and get some staining done. The forecast shows Saturday being gross, but relief is on the way Sunday.

Custom Kitchen Table

I bet you were starting to wonder if we were planning on reFinding anything soon....don't worry...we won't leave you hanging.

Our good friend came to us with this table.....

She found this stunner on craigslist and wanted to take it from country to contemporary.

This is where Meg and I come in! We started off by sanding it down. Taking care to remove both the polish and the stain. The wood underneath was gorgeous!

Then we grabbed our stain and got to work. 

Once the stain color was just right, we finished off the look with some poly. Four coats in fact. Since this table is being used in the kitchen, we know it is going to get a lot of wear-and-tear, so we wanted to make sure it would stand the test of time.

As a refresher....here is the BEFORE:

And here is the AFTER!

We think it turned out fabulous.  Now that the table is done, it's onto the bench!