The Five Legged Table in Provence and Kona

Ok…. so the title of this post sounds a little like a weird Indie film title… oh well … I think the tale of this table is so long it could be made into a short Indie film… who would they get to star as me… covered in sawdust… stain… gunk I don’t even know what it is… not many women I know.. maybe if the part was written for a man!

Perfect guy for the job.. MIKE ROWE…

This is a nasty, dirty job most of the time and I pretty much looked like the picture of Mike above.. FUN times 😉

On to the tale of the TABLE…

This table was listed as a “paint me” special at a local shop…. I of COURSE fell in love with it immediately because of her GORGEOUS legs… she is mahogany and has no missing parts (if you don’t count the missing leaves, which I don’t ’cause they are always missing, umm.. is there a special place where all of the missing socks and table leaves go to be found later?)

The Top:

She had some pretty good-sized scratches on the top, but I was hoping to be able to sand them out and stain the top.. my backup plan was to paint the top.. I told myself there was NO WAY I was removing the veneer… I sanded the top down and had to fill one tiny scratch that was just too deep, I then stained the top Kona, I had to use two coats…. after the first coat some of the scratches were still visible, but once the second had been applied they virtually disappeared.. man did that make me happy!

Now, for the apron..
She had a lot of allergatering (can I use this word in this way? sorry if not, but that is what was happening!) I started out sanding the apron with the orbital sander and that worked great, except for the areas near the top and the bottom molding.. I tried to use my mouse sander for those areas, but the poly just kept melting on the sandpaper and gunking it up.. so the table sat for a while I thought of how next to tackle it. My next thought was to use a stripper (as a side note I do love it when my husband calls me and asks what I’m up to and I can honestly tell him “stripping in the garage”.. hee.. hee, look it’s the little things that keep you going right?) Anyway.. I did two applications of the stripper, it took a lot of it off, but still left goopy areas that I was having a hard time getting to, not to mention getting off so…

My final solution (partially based on the fact that some of the veneer was loose) was to remove the trim molding (intact, to be reattached later) remove the veneer and use the wood underneath..

Now some of you may know that depending on the age of the piece you will still have a VERY good quality wood under the veneer.. I was totally banking on that! So I removed the veneer, which could have been a much worse job than it was, and sanded the apron with 80 / 100 / 150 / 220 sandpaper, in that order. The wood was beautiful.. and in great shape..

I applied a coat of Kona stain and let it dry. Meanwhile I removed the old nails & gunk from the apron trim piece and sanded it down to reattach. I applied some glue, clamped it on and nailed the piece to the table using the original nail holes. I had to trim it down when I got to the end because the circumference of the table had changed with the removal of the veneer, by 1 1/2″! After I filled the nail holes & sanded the trim piece I then stained it to match the rest of the top.

After everything was stained and dry I applied a couple of coats of polyurethane to the top and apron.

Whew! Now the base..

She got a good sanding (again the allergating) and two coats of ASCP in Provence.

We have a had a run of nice weather here recently so I was able to take her outside to sand her down and blow her off with the blower (love that!) I put a coat of clear wax on the base and then I painted a few areas on the legs with an accent stripe in Old Ochre and then buffed her down.

Oh yeah, almost forgot… she also got some new wheels.. the original ones were missing (went to hang out with the socks & leaves I guess :0) so I replaced them with some wood ones that I think would have been similar to the original wheels.

The End Result….
I love this table… it’s funky legs, the color combination, the wheels and the fact that it was resurrected to provide many more years of happiness for someone! The top is not “showroom” perfect but it is as good as it can get… and it really does look great!

I would love to hear what you think about her… I love comments 😉

Thanks for stopping by!

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