My newly refinished table!

Oh how excited I am to do this post! I have lived in Utah now for just over a month and finally have a kitchen table to sit down to eat our meals at now.  Oh joy! So my brother and sister in-law got a new, lovely, kitchen table and gave us their old one.  Here is what it looked like when we got it--

Since we have had it, I went and bought some paint at a place called Four Chairs Furniture in Lindon.  We spent about fifty dollars on the paint and finish.  While I was there, she gave me some tips on how to do the look I wanted.  She first told me to sand it down to the wood and make sure to get it to that point, or the paint won't stick as well.  So I sanded it down.  My sweet husband did the chairs while I was at work one day, and apparently it took a lot longer than my job on the table.  It was nice of him! Once all of the sanding was done, it was time to paint! My plan for the table was white underneath and a black top.  I wanted it to have the distressed look, so when I started it I painted black all over-3 coats.  Another tip I was given, was get paraffin wax and put it on the black coat where I wanted to distress it.  I did this, and am still unsure on if I like it or not.  Why I say this is because when I sanded the white to get to the black, it just rubbed right off and did more distressing in some places than I wanted.  Anyways, after the wax, I painted 3 coats of white paint on the bottom of the table.  I gave it a day or two to dry (only so long because I was busy with other stuff, but one day is plenty).  After I was done painting the table, I did the finish coat.  Again, she told me to paint a coat, let it dry, and then sand it with a brown paper bag.  Do this between each coat, and there will be three coats of finish also.  Sounds weird, but I did it anyways.  Once the table was done, I painted the chairs completely black and our bar stools black top with white underneath.  I also coated those in the finish.  I let them dry and put them all back where they go, and now we actually eat at our kitchen table! Here is the finished product!

A closer look at the bottom so you can see the distressing--

And the stools--

There is my project that has been consuming my time for the past month! Hope you enjoyed!
-Melanie