Welcome back! Sorry it has been a while! I've been busy with school, and the weather has really put a damper on my home-makeover-spirit!
Anyway, I told you that we finished the bench in the kitchen and that the next project was to find the perfect table to fit the space. Before we had a square table with four legs in each corner so it was pretty hard to scoot your legs around when you wanted to sit on the bench. It was an old laminate wood table that my Naunie got from the previous owner of her condo so there wasn't much sentimentality to it. So needing a new table, I hit Craigslist and the local antique stores. If you don't use Craigslist, I encourage you too, but make sure that you don't meet with some creeper on your own. Just my little Craigslist safety warning.
Anyway, there were a lot of round tables online, but we had a few requirements: had to have a leaf, had to have a pedestal base, and had to be less than 45" in diameter. These made it a little bit harder to find the right table, but Eric had the ultimate faith and convinced me to pass up a few that were good fits but not perfect. I found the perfect table in Wixom so I headed out there with my neighbor and bought the beaut. It was a lovely brown color :(. You can see the color that it started below.
We started by laying out our drop cloth that looked a lot like a Dexter episode. Then we sanded...a lot! I bought myself a power sander after I quickly realized that sanding by hand was a huge pain in the butt. Plus, I figured I would use it on my next project (which I have). Now I have a sander, staple gun, and Dremel. FYI: Eric is required to log them in and out if he wants to use my tools, just as Papa Walrus has taught me. Here you can see the sanding process:
After a lot of sanding, I primed the pieces. It put on two coats of Zinsser Primer. It is amazing. A lot of people use KILZ for projects, but I have only had good results with this so I'm sticking to it. It's not very expensive either.
We primed it twice, and then I put on two coats of paint. Then I polyurethaned it three or four times, only to realize that it left a weird yellow sheen on the table. I sanded the poly off and then put another coat of paint on it and waited for it to dry. Here's the finished product in the kitchen:
What do you think? We really like it! It fits a lot of people and now you can swing your legs around. I put a lot of paint on it so we hope that it will be durable and last a while! We made a few other changes since last time. We hung some plates on the wall as decoration. I found them on super clearance at Target and couldn't pass it up. I think they are fun and match the whole style of the kitchen.
When I was picking up the table from Wixom, the guy had a bunch of other stuff so I got these two boxes for the wall. It's the perfect place for our butter and the adorable salt and pepper shakers (Yes, I am obsessed with my dogs). We have minimal counter space so moving anything from the counters is definitely helpful.
My next project is the space seen below. It's a little alcove in our hallway that is wasted space right now. I think it would be the perfect place for a little bar cart/shelf. I want something little that can hold bottles and our glasses and could be used to mix drinks when we have people over. If we can get the wine glasses and tumblers out of the kitchen cupboards, it would open a lot of space for other kitchen things. I went looking at the resale shops in Berkley yesterday so I'll keep you posted on what I found and how it goes :)
