Our family is growing as should our dining room table right? We were very blessed with my husband's great-grandparents dining room table set and 4 chairs when we were married and it has treated us very well. Until I found a oak beauty for a steal and it became this beautiful set after many nights of painting, sanding, stapling and love.
I have always admired farmhouse style tables, their ivory glory, colorful padded chairs, even benches. I have been dreaming about this exact table for a very long time. The Little Bits of Bliss blog hit this right on the spot.
And I knew had to have it. With a little paint these days, really, anything is possible. This is what the table looked like before I started (I apologize for the crummy images, midnight hour painting with a baby is how things get done around here).
Now to backtrack. I first found a steal of a table with 6 chairs in the exact curvy legged farmhouse style I was looking for until I realized I neglected to ask the seller if the tabletop was real wood (with visions of just staining the top and refinishing the chairs). It was formica. So I ventured on to find another table and came across this huge heavy oak (with 2 12" leaves) on its way, literally, in a trailer, to an auction to be sold. They even came to my office with it and waited in town until I finished at work for them to deliver it to my garage. I love North Dakota.
After priming it with an oil based primer, only the bottom, and giving it two coats of leftover paint from our bathroom remodel (images to come) this was the quickest part of the adventure.
Aren't these chairs beautiful? I love how they turned out. I gave each chair a coat of oil based primer (I used this to save time on sanding and removing the varnish), and 2-3 coats of my leftover ivory bathroom paint they were ready for new covers. I must not have taken a picture of the chairs in their previous life, trust me, they were not magical. Our wonderful neighbor's father is retired and was a sweetheart by cutting me all new boards for them as I cut new foam and reupholstered them with wine and The Voice.
I lighted sanded all of the chairs with a 60 grit sandpaper to rough them up as well as the bottom of the table. We recently had our daughter's 1st birthday party and I was so excited to be able to have our entire family around the table with room to spare.
Here is a closer image of the chairs reupholstered. I chose a vibrant chevron pattern for the side chairs and a coordination floral for the captains chairs.
What did I do with that extra table you ask? It joyfully still sits in our garage. It might be going to work as our creative inspiration station, if so, I need to start painting before the snow flies.
And now that tonight I went to a Chalk Paint class at Eco Chic Boutique here in town I am super excited to get started painting an antique hoosier hutch we recently brought into the house as well as a few other projects.