First Project

Over the last few months Erin and I have been collecting a number of "projects" that we want to do. Of course, we were quite busy getting married, and then honeymooning, and then moving, and then settling. And ideas always sound a lot better when you don't have to do it rightnow. But now that we ARE settled, we no longer had any excuses. Thus began our first project.

Erin's parents gave us a fantastic table along with a leaf and seven chairs.

 

But the green paint wasn't working for us, and Erin wanted a darker stain. So, on our very first free Saturday (my birthday) we took a trip to Home Depot. And after what seemed like many hours later, we returned home with all of our supplies. LOTS of them. Apparently it's a bit more complicated than we thought... Perhaps because we didn't really think it all the way through.

The steps:

1) Strip current stain from wood. This involves spraying/painting the wood with thick coats of nasty chemicals and then scraping it off, repeating until all traces of the former stain are gone.

2) Sand it. Simple, but anybody who's sanded by hand before knows this is long and tiring.

 

3) Sand it again. Yes, again. With a finer sandpaper.

 

4) Pre-treat the wood to be stained. Apparently this stuff is supposed to soak into the wood and then help the stain soak in more evenly. (You have to get the right kind that matches with your stain, and we accidentally picked the wrong one. By this point I was NOT in the mood to go shopping again... So we skipped this. Everything turned out okay, but I can definitely see how it would have been better to use this.)

5) Stain the wood. You have to rub the stain in and then wipe off the excess. Repeat until you're done- which was quite a few coats in our case, because we wanted it so dark. I definitely had a hard time getting it to go on even. And I found out how important wiping off the excess is... it starts covering up the grain, which is contrary to the whole point of staining in the first place.

 

 

6) Coat it with poly-somethingorother. So its all protected and shiny. A few coats of this stuff... It's really hard to put it on evenly.

 

7) Lastly, a few coats of paint. The real trick being the fact that you can't mess up everything you did in steps 1-6.

 

Erin optimistically imagined this would take a good afternoon. I was thinking a week. God bless us...
One thing that makes it tricky is how you practically have to do each thing a few times, waiting a few hours between repeating. That's obnoxious. Also, our space is kind of limited. We have a little balcony, but it's not enough room to put everything out on it at once. We moved indoors for the poly and painting. This meant we spent two weeks eating on our couch.

We STILL haven't actually finished everything... I've had to take some time off before I lose my mind. BUT we did finish the table and four chairs! They're not perfect, but we're quite fond of them. :)

 

Wish us luck finishing the rest... :)