the Antique to "THE Bomb"tique

When Scott and I were first married we didn't have one piece of furniture of our own. Everything (still to this day) that is in our house, in the "furniture department", has been given to us. Our bed, study desk, chairs, both couches, love seat, the T.V. armoia (how the heck do you spell that???), the beloved piano, book shelves, night stand, oh and the 3rd couch upstairs, our rugs, lamps, and lastly kitchen table. Wow! I never realied how much we had been given....thank you family! So when we got our 1st little apartment, my darling grandma and grandpa gave us this table that isn't officially a "kitchen" table but we have used it as one since we didn't have any other option. We were warned it had bad water damage, and yes it did, so I have had a table cloth over the dang thing for over 3 years now (which gets filthy and dirty after one meal and I hate it).

Well I decided I was finally going to do something with it. I decided to paint it black to match the hutch in the kitchen (oh, thank you mom for that fabulous piece of furniture too!). So Scott and I stopped by Home Depot and asked the man what kind of paint would be best. He asked if the table was real wood and I told him yes it was, it was an antique from my grandma and gramps. He gave us the pep talk and this whole speach on "real" wood and how it was up to us what we wanted to do with it, but if it was him he would "no doubt about it" re-finish it. I'm telling ya, it was blessing we ran into that man.

So I had a day off work a few weeks back and decided to tackle the thing. I've never done anything like it, ever, but thought I could hack it and surprise Scott. Here is the picture of the table before:

Pretty bad eh? So I started sanding away at the thing....

....and was completely freaked out because I didn't know how much to sand or what the heck I was doing. But I didn't want to call Scott and ask him because I was trying to surprise him! This is me... freaking out....knowing I was totally blowing it.Let's just say I failed. Yep, I did. I didn't sand the wood all down to the same level and so when I re-stained it the wood was all these different colors and it just looked awful. Thank heavens for husbands who know their stuff. The table sat there in the kitchen for a week until finally Scott had a few hours to spare and he saved the day! I now have the most beautiful kitchen (well...kitchen to us) table you've ever seen!

This picture doesn't even do it justice but you can get a glimpse of how beautiful it is now. It's just perfect and I love, love, love not having an ugly table cloth over it. I've got my darling royal blue bowl on there filled with bright green Granny Smith apples and it's just darling. I love my new kitchen table! Thank you sweetie! Now.....could you just do the piano next?? Yikes!