Farmhouse Style Table Makeover

You may remember way back in January, I featured a farmhouse style table that my bestie S built for the back patio area.  It’s one of my favorite pieces she’s ever built.  Every time I look at it, I love it.  At the time, I wanted a table the color of a piece of driftwood.  The color stain I wanted to use wasn’t recommended for outdoors so I had to go with a stain color that was supposed to be “close.”

You know how you get a gut feeling as soon as you finish a project that something is a little off?  Well, that’s how I felt about the stain color.  It had way more blue in it than gray and I secretly hated the way it looked with the house color.  I left it for a few months thinking it would grow on me or that the sun would miraculously dry the blue tones out of the table but neither of those things actually happened.

I was sitting outside about three weeks ago regrouping from the day.  It was late in the  afternoon when I decided on a whim I couldn’t take the color any more.  I ran inside and grabbed my walnut colored stain wipes and set to work on “fixing” the table.  But in my haste to get started, I had mistakenly picked up mahogany stain wipes instead of the walnut stain wipes.

Cue the loud screams as my blue hued table mixed with the red tones of the mahogany stain.  The table I loved so much slowly started taking on a shade of purple – art class 101 – epic fail.

I had no choice but to continue with the mahogany stain because I didn’t want the stain to be uneven.  But once it had dried I was completely panicked. I decided to grab some steel wool and vinegar to try and take the stain off the table.  As you can see from this picture the stain had already seeped into the wood.  It had the weathered look I was going for but the finish was worse than it had ever been.

The next day, I repainted the top of the table with a homemade version of chalk paint using any and every version of white paint I could find.  It took two coats of the chalk paint and one coat of Zinsser primer before I could rest my nervous heart.

I also decided to add a coat of dark wax. I know wax is not recommended for outdoor use but what can I say, I was totally desperate.

On a side note, I’m so glad we stained the concrete.  Seeing this shot of the table on the patio before we painted it just makes me realize how bad it really was.

Over the past few weeks, the dark wax has melted into the wood and the sun has done an amazing job adding to the patina of the top of the table.

Every time I look outside my kitchen window, it’s confirmed.  This is the look I was after all along.

See you guys back here tomorrow.  I’ll show you how to make a menu board from an old door.

Many blessings,

Coco