It amazes me the things that people give away. When we were getting ready to move into our apartment I saw a post on Facebook that someone was giving away the table on the left. I immediately snagged it up and boy I’m glad I did. The table is really sold, heavy and has a great grain. The only problem was that it didn’t go very well with my chocolate brown couch… so I decided to stain it. Once I finished staining the first one and we moved in I realized we had room for another side table in the living room and saw the table on the right posted for I think $10. This one is really neat it has a glass top and I just love the little drawer.
When re-staining something the first thing you need to do is sand the item. You don’t need to completely take the old stain off like I did, but rough it up enough that the new stain has something to soak into. It turns out the drawer portion of the one table wasn’t actually wood though the rest was. Luckily I noticed before I took too much of the fake grain off and its at the back of the table so you don’t notice it too much and I just stained over what was there.
The stain I use is super easy to use. You just simply rub it on with a rag and let it dry, you can layer it once dry to get the coverage and colour you want. A little goes along way with this stain so this bottle lased me three projects! I found it at Home Hardware and used the colour Dark Walnut. The table with the drawer has little ridges that I had to use a small paint brush to get into.
When your done staining and it has completely dried I put a coat of varnish on the tops of the tables to protect it from wear as they were going to get a lot of use.
I am so happy with the way the tables turned out and honestly after seeing the difference I just want to stain everything! It is amazing how a simple coat of stain can give a piece a whole new life.
