Farmhouse Table Part II

Well, we did it.  The table that I started talking about here, is finally complete.  Sitting in our dining room and all. Who knew these un-handy folks could make a table?

We got a lot of good use out of our old table.  And even though I forgot to take a picture of it in our new house by itself, I do have these to give you an idea of what it looked like (and the fourth one is what it looked like without the leaf in our first home):

There's a lot to be said about this new table.  It was a labor of love, and by labor, I do mean it took a long time (my labor with BWL was 30+ hours, so that's the timeframe I'm going with).  After my dad and Matt got the bones together and I "weathered" all the pieces that would be showing (you know, with chains, a hammer, screws, and lots of beating) and sanded (first round of many many many more), we didn't look at the thing for a few days.  It just sat in the garage while I debated and researched how best to get the color I wanted out of the wood. 

{Oh, and of course, thanks go to this site for the building plans!)

And so, after reading about 20 different blog posts and DIY sites, I finally decided on the technique I wanted to use: steel wool & vinegar as my stain (plus some black tea pre-treatment on the pine planks).  If you're really interested in this stuff, the mixture itself worked like a charm in getting me a gorgeous grey/weathered look.  (Apparently this mixture oxidizes the wood when reacting with the tannins in the wood, which is why I had to pre-treat some of the planks with black tea - to add tannins)  You essentially throw a chunk of #0000 steel wool into a jar of vinegar (I used white, but people have used various kinds giving various results) and let it sit for a few days.  Filter out any remaining steel wool (it mostly dissolves), and brush on like stain.  If you google this process, you'll find about a hundred different tips and tricks, so I won't bore you here. (the photos below were taken on my phone, so the colors are a bit off, the table wasn't really purple...)

At any rate, I LOVED the look that I got after I finished staining all the wood.  Some pieces were nice and light grey, some were so dark they almost looked black (generally the fir pieces).  And after my dad and Matt put the rest of the table together in the house (it was too large to try and assemble it in the garage and then move it), it was exactly what I wanted.... (again, the color is a bit off in these pics, picture grey...)

And then I messed it all up!  I did a quick sanding to prep for the sealing stage and didn't even think to question the satin polyurethane that everyone talks about using for dining tables.  Research?  Nah, I did enough on the stain part, right?  WRONG.

Turns out polyurethane (oil-based) makes the wood much darker than whatever you've gotten it prepped to be.  Not only darker, but it brings out much more of the natural wood's color (i.e. brown).  The beautiful grey that I was loving on no longer existed.  I tried sanding it down, and nothing worked. So two coats of poly later (somehow thinking it might get better), I gave in and called a woodworking shop.  They were like "Oh yeah, you should have used a water-based sealant since you didn't use an oil-based stain... it preserves the color much better."  Duh.  So I tried to sand it well again (didn't help much) and prep for some water-based sealant.  And then I applied it, sanded it, applied it, sanded it, etc. until I got about 7 coats on the top (4 or 5 on the legs).

Did I mention how much work sanding is?  It was exhausting!!  If you're doing it yourself, I highly recommend the extra fine sanding blocks to use for the last few coats.  Saves your hand a lot of pain.  (Oh, and one bonus to a water-based seal is that it dries almost 8x faster, thank goodness)

Here's some of the transformation:

Already much browner after one coat of poly:

Putting water based over the poly (you have to wait til it cures, btw)... you can tell I've sanded down the poly coats quite a bit:

Several coats later, done!

And I realized it was much too nice to have the ugly black chairs with it any longer... and after a heartbreaking find on Craigslist (sold only minutes before I contact them), lots of garage sale hunts, and the like... I just ordered some cheapo white chairs from Target.  Don't judge.  They work for now!

It's wonderful having a beautiful new handmade table in our home.  Hopefully it has years of great memories ahead!