Table Refinishing Project

A while back I blogged about my client's living room which I've been working on.  Here is the concept board from a while back.

You can see on the left hand side a photo of a table that she'd inherited from her mother.  We knew we wanted a sort of washed finish on this to coordinate with some of the other items in the room like the settee.  Well, it's sort of amazing how much people will charge to do a small job like this. So, I figured that since I knew what we wanted I would attempt to tackle it (and cross my fingers that I didn't lose a client in the process).  So here is the table after the first sanding. I managed to remove a drink ring from the burled top without ruining the veneer which was nice.  And I didn't have to sand all that much since it seemed like someone had already sort of stripped it somewhere along the line.

And here it is with some stain on the top, which we decided to keep dark to show off the burled grain.

And here is the scary part where I applied a grey oil-based paint on the rest of the body of the table to give it a washed appearance.  Eeeeek! Reminds me of a cheesy shabby chic redux that you'd find at a flea market (LA peeps, you know that stall at the Rose Bowl).

Here it is the next day when I applied more paint but did a bit more rubbing and sanding. Looking a little less scary!

And getting closer to the final product.

Finally, after a coat of polyurethane.  Not bad! Can't wait to show it to you all in the space.