Our "New" Table

Last night we moved our "new" kitchen table into the house. I painted it almost two weeks ago, and then I left it alone to cure before it became a victim of our family. Now that it's in the kitchen, its days are numbered.

We've been through a few kitchen table renovations during our marriage. You can see our original kitchen table here (as well as the different paint jobs it went through circa the early 2000's). In 2010, we got a new kitchen table - our first table straight from the furniture store! (See it here - with my old blue wall). That table was doomed from the start. We'd hardly owned it a minute before it got damaged from an iron and then warped by a water spill. The table top has been chipping apart for years. Scotty planned to build a new table top, and then we wanted to paint the legs and chairs for a little update, but then we were given a table that's a lot better built. 

Here is what it looked like: 

The table is pressed wood with a laminate over it. Ultimately, I don't know how well the paint job will hold up, but I'm hoping we get at least five years out of it. 

I didn't have a specific color in mind - I just knew I wanted something kind of neutral. I'm pretty flexible with projects like this. I ended up buying a quart of Annie Sloan chalk paint in old white and mixing in some gray chalk paint I had leftover from another project. I sanded the table a little bit to help the paint adhere better, and then I slapped on a few coats of paint. 

Since I'd mixed my own color, I ended up not having quite enough, so I had to get clever to make it work. I mixed a little bit of water in the paint and scraped out every drop of it. 

I decided to glaze the table because glaze gives the piece permission to have flaws - and let's face it - a painted table is going to have flaws. I had some tintable glaze leftover from another project, so I mixed in some gray paint that I bought from the mistint selection at Lowe's last year (I buy cheap paint all the time - I can't help it. It's an addiction). I put on a coat of glaze, which was terrifying because I knew the only way to get rid of the glaze would be to start over from square one since I was out of paint. Then I put on four coats of high performance topcoat (also left over from a previous project). 

I wanted to keep my kitchen chairs because I still love them (the scalloped backs haven't gotten old to me yet), but they are a little banged up and needed some updating. I considered a lot of options for paint, and when it came down to it, I'd rather pull out my own teeth than paint my chairs with a brush. We have a paint sprayer, but I would have had to thin the paint to use the sprayer, and it would have taken several coats, plus I would have had to wait for Scotty to come home to help me move the compressor, so I decided to be independent and use regular, old spray paint. 

A word about spray paint: I've used a lot of spray paint in my life. It has its problems for sure - it doesn't always coat evenly, sometimes it runs, it's wasteful on a windy day, and so on and so forth. But for my kitchen chairs, I decided to overlook all of those things because spray painted chairs will be easy to touch up. If someone's button on their pants scratches the paint on the chair, I can just spray it and be done with it. 

I went to the store to scope out the color selection, and I fell in love with Krylon Pistachio with a satin finish (I love the color, and I love the finish). 

I hauled the six chairs outside, gave them a good scrubbing (seriously the worst part), and sprayed them. Then I let them dry and I sprayed them again. Then I let them dry and I sprayed them again. Then I let them dry and I sprayed them again. After three-ish coats of spray paint and a few touch ups, they dried a final time, and then I brought them back in the house. 

They still need a few touch ups. I keep finding spots where the old color is showing through slightly. I bought a few cans of paint yesterday to keep on hand. 

Here is the final product:

It ended up costing about $100. Not bad for a "new" table.