Adventures in Domesticity

Since I'm a teacher and I have the summers off, I have a lot of time on my hands. Anyone who knows me, knows that my idea of a good time is not sitting around lazing about for 2.5 months. I like to be busy and have stuff to do! So I have several projects on the go to keep me busy and happy! The first of these was refinishing my table. Unfortunately, I didn't take a "before picture" to show you just how bad it was, but let me describe it! It was painted black and it must have had plenty of wear and tear because there were chips in the paint, and the previous owner just covered them up with spray paint! It looked bad! Really bad! I had this table for almost two years with the intention of refinishing it, and I finally got around to it.

I bought myself a power sander (I figured this may only be the beginning of my projects in domesticity!) and sanded the whole thing down to the wood. I wasn't really sure what was under the paint. Was it particle board? Would it need to be repainted, or would the wood be adequately nice to stain it? After hours and hours and hours of sanding, I found that there was in fact wood under the awful paint, but there was a small amount of black paint in the wood grain that wouldn't come out no matter how much I sanded it. I opted to find a dark stain, hoping that the black paint would go unnoticed. Here is it, two coats of stain and 3 coats of polyurethane later! Maybe the pictures don't do it justice, but the magnitude of aesthetic improvement is unparalleled!!! I think my next project will be to stain my chairs and make a matching set!