Last fall I spent veterans day weekend….four days….trying to redo my parents kitchen table. Let’s just say I underestimated the time I would take me to re-stain and paint 6 windsor chairs and one table. But in the end it was well worth it to revamp this set and give it new life.

The kitchen table at my parents house is where we sat down to eat, almost every night of the week. My dad was usually the first one home and my mom would leave instructions on how to make dinner. It was ready by the time she walked in at 6 o’clock every night and we would watch the news and eat dinner.

That kitchen table has a lot of memories…..It’s where I sat with food cut up on my plate (usually meat), several hours after dinner was finished. I wasn’t a huge fan of chewing steak and there was no dog I could slide my food to. It’s where I learned how to write thank-you notes. Because in the South a timely, hand written, thank-you note is ALWAYS expected.

The plan for this kitchen table was to sand and re-stain the table top and seat bottoms of the chairs. The table was originally stained with a cherry finish, but I love a dark walnut stain. The table legs, apron, chair backs/spindles and chair legs were painted in Annie Sloan’s French Linen colored Chalk Paint. Everything was finished off with Annie Sloan’s clear wax.

Here are some before pictures of the chairs and the table:

A couple of weeks before I went home to work on this project my Dad was kind enough to remove the stain from the table top and seat bottoms. He used a combination of stain-stripping liquid and sanding. To remove all of the stain, he used 60 grit sand paper. Then to get the table top and seats smooth, he tapered the grit of the paper used. I have found it is usually easy to go from 100-150-220-320-400 grit. It doesn’t take a lot of sanding with each type of paper, but it will provide a really smooth finish if you work your way up to the 400 grit paper.

Here are some comparison pictures of the naked wood to the original stain:

Restaining the top and seat bottoms didn’t take long, but painting all of those spindles did. To get complete coverage, two coats of paint with some extra touch ups were necessary. I have no desire to paint Windsor chairs ever again!

By the end of the weekend everything was either restained/painted, but I didn’t have a lot of time to put the wax finish on. So over the next couple of weeks my Dad put a couple of coats of wax on. When I got home for Thanksgiving I buffed the table to give it a nice shine. I detailed out the waxing process in this post here.

It took me a while to get some good shots of the final product, but I have to say it turned out pretty good! I am currently working on a kitchen table for my own house. I am still trying to figure out what I am going to do for chairs because I’m not painting those any time soon.