Table Refinishing Project

We inherited a solid oak table from my husband's grandma which I love! But it showed some wear and the color was not exactly my first pick of color, so I refinished my first ever piece of furniture!

This is the table before, shown in our old house!

A close up of one of the table leafs.
I was nervous about refinishing this table since it has family history, and I have never refinished furniture before. I knew I wanted to stain it a darker color, so I started sanding...

And sanding and sanding and sanding! I did not realize how long this would take me! But it took a lot longer than I thought it would take! I found having a beer while sanding helped make the sanding easier to deal with! I drank a lot of beer while refinishing this table (and beer is not my first choice of drink!)

An original compared to a sanded leaf.



Once I was finished sanding, I was WAY too excited that I was done, that I did not get a completed picture of the sanded table! I was so excited to be onto the next step of cleaning up, wiping the table down, and picking out my stain color.

Picking out the stain color was A LOT harder than I thought it would be! I thought I would just run to Home Depot and pick out a color and be on to staining the table. Well I was wrong, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the stain.

I ended up getting two Minwax stain colors: Ebony and Jacobean.


I did some experimenting with color on the bottom of one of the 3 leafs until I found the shade I wanted. I figured I had 3 leafs and if I ruined one I would be fine with the other two.

I ended up using 2 cans of jacobean to 1 can of ebony Minwax stain. I combined them into a plastic container and later transferred the mixed stain into an empty paint tin.

I wiped the mixed stain on with old t-shirts, and wiped of any excess.

To get the color I wanted I put on 3 coats of stain, which I experimented with in my sample.


I then gave the table 3 coats of spray polyurethane. I was not happy with how that covered, so I also gave it an additional coat of brush on polyurethane.

I am so happy to be done with my table!!! HOWEVER, the chairs that originally matched the table and as seen in my first picture, are way too detailed for me to sand down and re-stain. I do not have enough patience's for re-doing those chairs! So that lead to the next problem.... what to do about chairs.

So after lots of searching on Craigslist, I was able to find 4 chairs that will work with my new table. The finished table and my new chairs I will post as soon as I finally finish them!!