Stained and striped coffee table

Ahhhh, another project so long in the works.

My dad brought me this old table from my aunt’s house in Cincinnati. I wasn’t crazy about it at first — it is extremely heavy — but it started to grow on me. Plus, it’s way nicer than the Ikea table dad got us from a yard sale. So about a month ago I started to refinish this piece.

I really like the lines in the top of this table. I noticed right away the vertical lines in the table top, sandwiched by two horizontal pieces of wood. I had the idea to stain every other plank a dark gray to give this top some pizzaz.

So I went off to Home Depot to pick up some stain — I tried a new stain, Varathane, which I really liked. The polyurethane is particularly awesome.

I sanded the top of the table and then taped off every other slat with blue painter’s tape.

Once I taped off the table, I stained the contained slats a smokey gray using a sponge brush. I waited 10 minutes, then wiped off the stain.

Once the gray was finished, I started to apply the black stain over top of it. The black stain turned out to be more of a dark brown, which I liked. If I had done a second coat of stain, it probably would have been a bit more black. But I liked the contrast between the gray and brown.

This is where I stopped about a month ago — whoops. Between house-warming parties and jam-packed weekends, I just didn’t have the time to tackle this project.

Luckily, I had time this past Sunday to complete this project.

I took the table outside and flipped it over to stain the underneath.

I scraped the little stain drips off the underneath of the table, then stained the bottom black. I let it dry for a few hours, then applied several coats of matte Varathane polyurethane for the table.

I love this table now… it looks great. It feels great. I love the poly finish much better than glossy finishes I’ve used in the past. And, it looks fabulous in our living room. So pleased.

Side note… Has anyone tried the new panorama feature on the iOS 6 software for the iPhone. Look at this sweet picture of our family room.

Isn’t that fantastic? The room doesn’t look too bad either 😉