The Big Reveal

I really love my table. I love it when my eyes land on it as I walk into my apartment (As Oprah says: "my home stands up and greets me"...or something like that) . The candlestick holder that my sister got me last Christmas looks mighty fine-- much better on this than the stark black table I had once. My favorite part? The white dipped chair legs. I hope you enjoy looking at my re-do as much as I do!!!

It's not all peachy-king though. I do have the bumby lines from the paint tape on the border, but I left a box of soda cans on the top of the table for a couple days, and when I picked it up this happened:

&%($&%(%*!!!!!!!!!!!! Was my veneer not all the way dry??? can someone tell me what I did wrong?

Still, I am proud of myself. 

If you are just joining me on my big adventure here is:

Part 1: sanding
Part 2: primer
Part 3: paint

Table re-do part tres: paint

Sorry about yesterday. I know I am supposed to reveal my table and all today, but i got caught up last night at a family dinner and forgot to blog. So the big reveal will be Saturday!!!

Painting (water based). Because I hardly primed my table at all, it took about three paint jobs on my table, legs, and chairs. This took the longest amount of time. The primer took very little time to dry, but with paint I had to do one coat one night, wait till the next night and do the next, so on and so on. Steve was great during this time. He helped me so much painting the chairs every night. I love him.

Steve cleaning up after a night of painting.

One coat done!

After all the coats were done, it was time for the details. I was inspired by this table top and these dipped legs.  With the table top, I drew the lines out with a pencil and a ruler. It took me a while to figure out that I had to wait to paint the square corners until the painted border had dried. I had to do it this way because the lines I made were 2" wide, and the tape I bought was 1 1/2" wide... meaning those two inch squares were way to hard to make perfect if I had painted it all at once:

That square center is far from perfect in this picture. This would have never worked. I should have bought 2" tape. 

So I had to do the border first, wait for it dry, and then paint the squares. It took foooorrrr dddaaaayyyysss to finish. 

The finished product.... not so hot. Those bumpy lines were/are keeping me up at night. The tape I used wasn't great or I didn't wait long enough or too long for the paint to dry??? I don't know. A girl at work suggested I use Frog Tape instead of normal paint tape.... Anyway, I used a small paint brush for touch ups. From far away, it looks great. So as long as Steve and I eat on the couch and stare at our table it's all good.

Now for the chairs. I measured up the leg 6" and marked it. Then with the painter's tape I decided white tipped legs over gold ones (the white looked so good against the gray) For some reason, the tape worked way better (no bumps) on the chairs than on the table. 

I thought about doing gold dipped table legs, but when my sister, Anna, saw them all she could think of was an 80's dinner table (and not in a good way). I'll save the gold spray paint for another project.

After the gold dried, I sanded it ALL THE WAY off, primed the ends twice, and then did two coats of white paint.

The veneer came last after waiting 24 hours for the last coats of paint to dry. I did three coats fo veneer with a 24 hour period inbetween. FOOORRR DAAAYYYSSS. Veneer is really important though; without it, your job turns crappy fast. We used a combination of spray veneer for the chairs (easy to get in all those nooks and crannies) and paint on for the table top. Between each coat a light sanding is required, and when I was going over one chair, THE PAINT STARTED PEELING OFF!!!!!!

Once again, I believe this is due too my lack of proper sanding and priming. To fix the problem, I sanded this area of the chair all the way down to the raw wood, primed twice, and then did all my coats of paint AGAIN. 

This was such a great learning experience for me. I would totally do it again since I now understand how to do it. What's that saying? If you fail once, try try again?

Table re-do part deux: priming

Priming. Priming priming priming. I do not know what happened with my regular pant primer (oil based) when I did my table top, but once it dried, I had to sand down the whole thing off and start again. I think the problem was that I used a paint brush. For some reason the primer would not spread thin enough with a brush. I had to switch to my handy dandy roller to finish the job. 

see the paint strokes? Not cool beans. If I didn't sand this down and do it again, you would see every stroke through the paint.

After the sand down. Looking at this now, I should have sanded ALL THE WAY THROUGH the black paint to the raw wood.

Once I used the roller, the primer went on a little better. I'm still not sure why it was going on so thick.... anyone know? 

The next mistake I made was I only did ONE COAT of primer on a black table and chairs that are meant to go to white. Stupid. I should have done at least 3 coats of primer, with a light sanding in-between coats (the light sanding is necessary). 

The chairs were tricky. I barely sanded them down at first (stupid) and I used the paint brush to apply the primer on two of the chairs. On the other two, I had Steve use the spray primer (oil based). The results were better, but the chairs would have been great if I had done... MORE THAN ONE COAT. 

as you can see, this project took over my entire apartment.

Now, to clean your brushes/rollers of oil-based paint is quite the process. You can't just use water and soap in a sink.... I did not know this until Steve checked on the internet how to really dispose of it:

Paint thinner should be used to remove oil-based paint from brushes. Once the brush is clean of paint, rinse the brush in the sink with stinking hot water.

To get rid of oil-based paint on your hands, scrub your skin with canola oil and salt. Rinse with the hottest water you can stand. 

Water-based primer is ok, but it takes A WEEK to cure before you can paint over it. Ugh, no thank you. A trip the the recycling plant to dispose of the paint thinner (don't throw it away!) is worth the week saved. Save the water-based for the paint...tomorrow!

yes, it's been awhile.

Hello all. I have not dropped off the face of the sewing earth, I have merely been visiting the moon of furniture. It is quite the place-- full of high stress and time is sucked into a black hole until you realize that you've spent two and half weeks refurbishing a table that was in perfect condition in the first place. I just had a burst of energy three weeks ago to paint my black table white and gray.... this is what pinterest has done to me: given me inspiration that leads to sleepless nights inhaling paint fumes in my apartment (I have no garage or workshop).

I saw this furniture DIY on pinterest and was dying to do something like it. I scanned the furniture in my apartment and decided on the table; I had too much black in the place anyway. I'm going to wait till Friday to show you all the finished product... yep, this blog post is a whole week long of details! yippee for a whole week of new posts, right!?....right?

alright, alright. here's a sneak peak:

So I started by going to Home Depot and after consulting many furniture how to's (here, and here, and here) I decided on using oil-based primer and water-based paint. Here is the rest of the stuff I needed:

Top to bottom row, Left to Right:

1. Water based paint

2. Floetrol: helps reduce paint-stroke lines as you paint....supposedly. I didn't really notice a difference. 

3. Water-based top coat

4. oil-based primer in paint or spray (spray was easier but way more expensive. I needed about 4 cans just to do four chairs). 

5. lint-free wipe cloths

6. Purdy paint brush. I scrapped this early on and just used a small roller... you'll see why. 

7. Painter's tape: a MUST for the corner details on the table.

8. A sander...but not the dinky one pictured. You need a heavy duty power sander. That dinky one couldn't sand down a chopstick.

underneath everything: canvas drop cloth.

So, first step after I got home from Home Depot: SANDING. I did NOT SAND ENOUGH AT ALL. I really only took off the top veneer coat...a wrong doing. I really should have gone all the way through the paint and touched the wood. I think my table would have looked better afterward if I had. 

Here we go with the power sander! I have a Ryobi sander. 

TIP: don't wear your favorite Ann Taylor sequin top. Change into your "painter's clothes".

This is about as far as I got sanding. See? Totally not enough. A black table turned to a white table needs much more prep than I thought.....as you will see in tomorrow's exciting post about....

PRIMING!!!