Staining a farmhouse table and some hiccups along the way.

Who knew that blazing hot sunshine and thick fast drying paint were not a good combination??

Well, now we BOTH know….

I couldn’t even get the sprayer to even work. 

Uggg.

But what is a mama to do when she has fifteen minutes tops to finish a project??

Move on to the next one!

It had taken me a good part of a Sunday afternoon to sand the finish off of this table top.

And now she was ready for some pretty stain.

I was actually really loving the natural wood that looked so raw and beautiful and hated to stain it, but alas, it needed to be done, and I wasn’t about to waste 15 minutes of potential DIY project time.

I whipped out my handy dandy board of stain samples that I made up when I talked about the huge barn door dilemma.

Remember??

 

I wanted to stain the table so it coincided with some of our main wood elements that would be near it.

Such as this guy…

After some speculation it looked like Red Oak was the closest match.

Sure enough, after one coat, I knew it wouldn’t need much more stain to make the table rich and beautiful once again.

After two more coats, some open windows and an escape to the park with three crazy kids it took the better part of an afternoon to get the stain to look just as we had wanted.

I finished it off with a diamond wood finish by applying this varathane sealer with a soft cloth.

I did a couple of coats just to make sure it was nice and sealed and ready for sticky-mess-kid-hands and spaghetti nights.

Because I like to multitask, (husband says “rush”) I painted the original navy base and table skirting that beautiful matte black I was hoping to spray the chairs with.

Everything works out with a little DIY creativeness. 🙂

A Cosco pack of tuna helped elevate our table and save our light floors from black paint.

PS: Who knew that when a baby knocks over a can of dark stain if the mama stays calm and wipes it up quickly with a whole roll of paper towels while praying loudly that the light floor can be saved and the baby can be thrown in the kitchen sink and the only thing that will have permanent damage is the baby boys cute little carpenter style jeans. 

Wood stain stained carpenter jeans? Ironic? Oddly adorable? 

Yes. 🙂

I’m loving the way the table top turned out, despite our little DIY hiccups along the way.

No project is perfect and mine usually have some set backs. Determination is key with DIY’s, especially when little people need to be thought of and entertained. 

YOU can do it Mama. 🙂

The stained top turned out to be just the colour we wanted on our big farmhouse-ish table.

We have already been testing out its durableness and wearing it in!!

The sticky Pasta fingers love its colour blending qualities too. 😉

….so does mama.

🙂 

Have you had any DIY fails lately?? Do you read instructions? Or are you like me and you “rush” through these kind of things because you are a time-efficient-go-getter?