How I Stained and Painted My Pedestal Kitchen Table

Last year, just after we moved into our house here in Stittsville, I bought a round pedestal kitchen table from Kijiji. I found it for only $200! It is solid wood and just what I was looking for to put into our little kitchen nook. The only problem is that it was a very light orangey yellow wood. My plan was to give it a makeover and I finally got around to getting it done. FINALLY! Here is what it looked like before the transformation.

My plan was to stain the top of the table and the seats and paint the rest white. I began by stripping the varnish off of the table top and the seats. I used a gel furniture stripper that I painted onto the table and then a metal scraper to scrape off the varnish. Don’t forget to use gloves. Not the little thin ones but proper stripping gloves otherwise it will eat right through them. I know this from experience. This stuff is strong! Wearing a mask and proper ventilation are also recommended.

I removed my chair seats and put them outside in my gazebo. Just so that I didn’t have to breath in too many fumes! I did not sand the table top after removing the varnish but I did sand the seats. Only because my dad showed up and he is the master sander and loves to sand. He used my little Black and Decker Palm sander. To be honest when it came to stain application it did go on better on the sanded wood. Although,  the end result you couldn’t tell the difference.

I only removed the varnish on the areas I was going to apply stain. Next step, the fun step, was the stain application. I used Java Gel stain from General Finishes. It seemed to be the one recommended the most on pinterest. I must say it was a very good stain. I love the finished product! I used a brush to apply and then a lint free rag to rub it into the wood.

In the picture above the right side has two coats of stain and the left only has one. You can really customize the look. If you don’t want it too dark just wipe it off until it is the colour you like. I think I ended up doing 3 coats of stain because I wanted quite a dark finish.

The next step after staining the table top and the chair seats was to paint the pedestal and the chair legs and back. I used the same steps that I did on my kitchen cabinets. Clean thoroughly with TSP. Two coats of primer and then 3 coats of Benjamin Moore Advance in Simply White. I used a small microfiber roller and a small brush for the hard to reach places.

To finish it all off I applied 3 coats of my favourite polyacrylic to protect the surface from, let’s face it, my family full of boys! I absolutely love, love, love how it turned out! Fits in much better with my painted kitchen cabinets.

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To recap here is a list of products (or similar ones) I used for this project:

Thanks for  taking the time to read my blog and have a great day!

Karla

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