A Weekend Project

A few months ago Blake and I transformed an old looking table into our everyday dining room table. It was our first DIY project, but it actually went pretty smoothly.  It's really is easy to refinish a table! 

First, we used a liquid stripper (or a chemical stripper) to remove the old stain. This involves painting the paste like liquid stripper onto the table and letting it sit. We used wide putty knives to scrape off the old finish. If you let the liquid stripper sit long enough to do the work, getting the old finish off is quite easy. For the table legs, you may need to use a smaller scraper or brush to get into the small grooves of the table. 

Next, we wiped down the table with Mineral Spirits. This cleaned the table and made sure that it was ready for the stain. 

Lastly, we painted on the stain and let it dry! There are tons of different stain options at the store, some with the polyurethane finish and stain in one. We used a paint brush to apply the stain, but there are many ways to do this.

Here is the finished product! It was such a fun project!